On The Folded Paper’s 1st birthday, a story on how it started
More than a year back, we smiled looking at a few sheets of paper tucked away inside a closely shut notebook. Those were the sheets of paper where we had written our emotions and thoughts and which we had hidden away from people and ourselves. Why?
Because we firmly believed that nobody will like it. Our audience won’t read it. We didn’t know who our audience was, but we were sure about what they will do, or won’t.
So, it was logical to fold them away and forget they existed.
But, coming to face the ‘folded papers’ with our writing after so long was a moment of epiphany. Because, to our surprise, the audience liked it.
Our audience that was our own selves.
May be writing needs as much thinking and believing as it needs writing to survive. Because when we thought about what happened, we concluded that this audience of our own selves would always be there to appreciate and smile at whatever we write. Hence, we continued to write.
As we slowly started to write more, we found out (and believe now) that writing is a therapy and everyone is a therapist in that right. We became ‘The Therapists’ healing ourselves and learning all along the slight slant of the words.
But, we lacked practice, consistency, and dedication. We also needed inspiration and a community which keeps reminding us how amazing it is to write. We wanted to build an engaging, rewarding process and structure to write, even for those who don’t usually write and also for ourselves who wrote sporadically.
Thus born was “The Folded Paper”, a writing community, on April 21, 2019, for people who write for their ideal audience — themselves; for the ideal reason — simply because words exist and they can make sentences with those words about the feelings they feel so that they can proudly call themselves ‘The Therapists’.
Through the last year, we have worked to provide the inspiration, space, and knowledge support to those who want to write. We wish for everyone — professional writer or not — to feel what we felt when we opened those sheets of paper.
We’re trying to make writing more mainstream and accessible. Because what it takes to write is there within us.
If you like our story, hop on, write on. Message The Folded Paper: Writing Group.
And, also wish us a very Happy 1st Birthday!
To many more papers to come!
