Practising in imperfect conditions

I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was 10 years old. In every school ‘autograph book’ I signed, I would list my dream as wanting to be a ‘poetess’. Representation Pic/istock

Practice" is a word to which I feel increasingly attuned in my late thirties. Possibly because it has accrued deeper connotations across the wider span of my lived experiences, even though the word registered itself in my vocabulary since childhood, I could date my intentional use of it to when I was in the third standard, so about eight years old, and joined the children's choir. We had ‘practice' every Thursday, if I remember correctly. I had also begun weekly piano practice around then. In school, we had "marching" practice all through December ahead of Sport's Day, and we usually called it "practice" if we were cast in some school play or singing competition and needed to attend daily rehearsals.

The frequency of our usage of the word begins to wane over time, however, especially as we get busy earning a living and find ourselves short on time for hobbies. Unless you have friends who are getting married and you need to brush up on your choreographed dancing skills, one doesn't ‘attend' practice, nor do we necessarily even dare to chart new waters and take on a new vocation.

I was 10 years old when I knew I wanted to be a writer. In every school "autograph book" I signed, I would list my dream as wanting to be a "poetess". At some point, it changed to psychologist, but the dream of wanting to be a writer remained. It was what moved me to pursue a graduate degree in English literature. I had no one in my immediate circle of friends and acquaintances who could show me the ropes. I wrote sappy poems that I only shared with my best friend. I read a lot, not just because reading books was part of my syllabus, but because I had internalised that in order to write better, you had to digest as many literary works as you could. There were no creative writing programmes in my student days, so I had no way of knowing that to build a writing practice, you had to commit to writing regularly. You had to build a discipline of attentive listening and intentional note-taking. I didn't know any of this, but the one thing I did, intuitively, was maintain a diary. I didn't do daily entries, but I did attempt regularity. I still have the first disciplined diary I maintained during the first year of my undergraduate degree. Most of my entries recount the pure joy of making contact with new ideas, with professors who excited me, who made their subjects come alive, professors who have now passed away, like Eddie.

One of the reasons I've been thinking of practice so much is because I recently undertook my first art writing assignment in more than a year. Because the editor is a friend, and the artist I'm writing about is someone who has influenced my writing. Where, ordinarily, a piece of this nature would have taken me two weeks at best, amid other work and assignments, this time I've taken two months! Not only because I feel "unpracticed" but because the demands of motherhood and full-time work make it so difficult to find the time to immerse myself in such writing. Because to get into a state of flow, you need to be able to give yourself time. You need to try out a few sentences, see how they align, delete if necessary, begin again from scratch, even. In order to "save" time, I got my recording transcribed by AI only to learn that doing the transcripts myself is actually a significant part of my practice. It helps me pick up on what is unspoken, what lies beneath the surface of a conversation.

As my 10-year alliance with mid-day as a columnist comes to a close, I've been reflecting on what it has meant for me to publish such a feminist diary every week for a decade. This discipline definitely altered the tenor of my writing. This intervening period is book-ended by two of my own books. I wrote my first column after my debut book, and will soon write my last ahead of the international publication of my next book, which owes its literariness to the discipline that was nurtured because of this column.

I'm toying with the idea of a Substack newsletter to continue the practice. I'll let you know if I do, so you can subscribe for my updates. I've been wrestling with all the scraps, leftovers, and notations made over 15 years of my writing practice. Maybe what they need is to live in a virtual house. I still don't know at what point I truly "became" a writer. I've accepted that sustaining this vocation is hinged to one's commitment to words, not when one is succeeding but when one is floundering, even failing. To be a writer is to keep at it, even if the tap runs dry.

Deliberating on the life and times of every woman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She posts @rosad1985 on Instagram
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