Writing after trauma, joy, or a long break.

“Writing is a concentrated form of thinking” said Don DeLillo, and he’s right. But it is much more. Writing helps us deal with life events, process them and make sense of the world. Often, it is simply a conversation with ourselves about the beauty or absurdity around us. 

Writing after a rough time can be therapeutic – a coping mechanism. To restart writing after a break is to rediscover this beautiful process of introspection and creation.

I chose writing after I was arrested and put in jail. It helped me endure. When I left the city and moved to a Himalayan village, writing helped me chronicle and share this beautiful change by way of a blog. Even an insignificant event like my motorcycle saree guard breaking became fun when I wrote about it. 

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One cold December long ago, I was working for a company. Some irate customers filed a case against it, and I was arrested and put in jail. After the first two days, once I had secured safety and food, boredom became my biggest problem. In jail, you have no devices or friends, and are limited to mostly doing nothing. 

Much writing comes out of prisons. Jeffrey Archer wrote his 3 part prison memoir while in jail. Gregory David Roberts wrote the initial drafts of his famous novel, Shantaram, while serving time in an Australian prison. Legend has it that the manuscript was destroyed by prison staff twice before he completed it. Nehru also wrote “The Discovery of India” in prison.

I didn’t know all this when I was incarcerated. In hindsight, prisons make good writing retreats precisely because you have no distractions or friends. Besides, you are surrounded by interesting people and stories. 

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Two days after my arrest, I started writing. I spoke to the prisoners around me. I listened to their stories, their cases, their angst. Thirty days later, I walked out with two fat notebooks full of handwritten scribbles. A year after my release, Penguin published my memoir as the “Bad Boys of Bokaro Jail”. 

Writing after the arrest and incarceration helped me stay sane. It gave me hope that I could make something positive of this ordeal. Most importantly, it gave me something useful to do.

After prison, the corporate world was wearing thin for me and while I picked up a job (and proved I was still respectable) I was soon fired. My heart just wasn’t in working for a company anymore. 

As a family, we packed up and left the city of Gurgaon for a quaint little Himalayan village called Satkhol. The place was beautiful, but it was a difficult time for me. I had a family to support, but no income or opportunities. Writing after making this drastic move again felt natural. I created the uncity.blog and started writing. I wrote far and wide – about anything and everything I wanted. I wrote about the perceived loss of identity because of not having a job . I wrote a humorous one about writing being hard work. 

And today I am writing after a break. Life may pull us away from our writing and get in the way. But if writing does something for us, we invariably find our way back to it.

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Joining a community of writers and finding inspiration can help. If it feels hard, you can consider joining the First Draft Club. It happens four times a year and it is designed to get you writing again with writing sprints, buddies and a community. Details here. 

Writing after anything is a sort of completion of the process. If living is like eating and chewing, writing is when we truly digest our experiences.