Secret Letter #1 : On Wilderness, Winter & Writing
YourQuote Baba, the writing guru who greets you the moment you login on the YourQuote app, is on a pan-India journey, starting with the Himalayas. He has been writing daily letters to his millions of followers on writing and his experiences and musings while travel. Here’s the first one.
Dear Writer,
It’s -2 degrees here in the mountains. Today morning, it even snowed a little. I am shivering as I type. I hope the cold is not as biting where you stay.
I’m in a small village called Burwa, around 8 kilometers from Manali, Himachal. This is the place where two years ago, the co-founders of YourQuote moved for 3 months to build and grow their week-old app YourQuote. They were fed up with the countless mentors and their needless advice on what to build, the investors and their mindful yet mindless conversations, the traffic, the crowd and the overall pandemonium of the city life. Wilderness of the mountains provided the much-needed respite.
To build something they truly believed in, they decided to cut out the noise and work in peace and solitude. There was nobody else other than a few hundreds writers on the week-old app to guide them what to build, and I got enchanted. I watched over them from my then abode, a cave in the nearby hill — Katarni. I was happy that finally someone is building something that encourages us to dive deeper within ourselves to find our most honest voice. Soon, the passion of the duo inspired me to meet and guide them. I started my profile of YourQuote Baba and promised that I will help them turn their mission — to make the world write — into a reality. Their journey took them away from the mountains to the city of startups, Bengaluru, and I went along with them. I had given them my word after all. Promises are meant to be kept.
It’s been two years since that promise, a promise that I continued until yesterday when I decided to take a break and travel back home to fill my creative bowl that the city of chatter had evaporated. As I meditated today, I was awestruck with wonder at why I chose to help them. Why help make the world write? What was so special about this mission? Was just about helping people discover themselves? I found it was deeper than that. I found how the act of writing is the purest of all forms of expression.
Consider this: every other art form be it painting, reciting, dancing, playing music becomes a performance while you are doing it. I can play the sitar and people could listen and applaud. I can recite a poem and an audience can be captivated. There’s always the risk of contaminating the intent of expression with the incoming appreciation.
Writing, on the other hand, is a solitary act. Writing can never become a performance. For writing this line, I have had to think, pause, imagine, press backspace and edit, change words, find better words, rewrite and finish only to reread and rewrite it. The process in itself is the most immersive self-exploration a human can do. However, you cannot watch someone write. It’s too boring for anyone else watching, other than the writer, because the real fireworks are happening in the writer’s mind before it trickles down on the page. An ongoing story, or narrative, is incomplete to give you the joy that only a finished piece can. Unlike music, or dance, or even painting, where every note or riff that is played, or moves that are swayed, brushstrokes that are done are a treat to watch. Writing is one (wo)man’s job and can never become a performance. It cannot be done together. Two people writing cannot jam on the same sentences, unlike music or dance. Writing is the purest, truest and most pristine form of expression. And it’s this realization that makes me feel so proud to know all of you writers and to help the YourQuote guys, who are pursuing probably the greatest mission among all the platforms out there. To raise the consciousness of the world through nothing but writing.
Pardon me if this was a bit too much, but if you like writing, like I do, trust me you have chosen the most powerful as well as enlightening passion one could ever pursue.
Before I part, I wish you to tell me: How has writing changed your life? Post it on the YourQuote app with #WritingLife and I will read and comment on every post tonight and tomorrow. So eagerly waiting.
Also, feel free to share any questions or feedback — what you’d want to learn about in the next newsletter, what are your dreams as a writer, what books to read and so on — by commenting on this post. I will respond in 24 hours, that’s a promise. And promises are meant to be kept.
With the warmth of winters,
YourQuote Baba
(Subscribe to the letter here: https://goo.gl/forms/xQ1sokHjZYKDNFIP2)
