They say writing is freedom. I’m still trying to believe that.
Even now, as I work on the second draft of my thriller novel, I sometimes hold back. I grit my teeth and wrestle with myself on every page. It is taking a lot of unlearning to break that. I want to dive headlong into the depths of the human mind—the darkness within us all. The suppressed rage, the lust for control, the selfishness we dare not name. I want it unhinged. Bloody. Honest. And what am I afraid of? The answer doesn’t sit politely in my chest—it runs in the depths of my heart, snarling like a feral thing.
I am learning to move in the freedom of a blank sheet of paper. Like it’s new to me. Like I don’t fully comprehend the goddamn power I hold in a sentence. Or maybe I do—and that’s what terrifies me.
“Kill your darlings.” A phrase that should have been a craft tip twisted into a knife.
“She’ll kill her darlings some day. God, the things she writes.”
Writer reduced to criminal. Artist accused of harbouring evil for daring to look into the dark places that hide behind polite smiles and well-mannered masks. I’m not going to let anyone ask me why it stung so much. I could have brushed it off as a joke. Yeah—it would have been a joke if anyone had fucking laughed. But it stops being funny when the person listening just nods and the room goes quite like a silent condemnation.
I wanted to spit words back at them. But I didn’t. I told myself it was pointless. Like arguing with a wall that calls itself righteous, the kind of person who believes they know best not for themselves but for the whole damn world. They hold court as if they’re the sole arbiters of decency and logic. How do you reason with that? What do you say to a stone masquerading as a soul?
So I grew quiet. I stopped talking about how human psychology fascinates me, how I want to dissect the mind through crime thrillers. It’s magnetic. It’s not curiosity—it’s compulsion. It runs bone-deep and nameless.
First came rage. Then came self-sabotage.
I don’t even have an explanation for why I held back. That comment rang in my head like church bells for the funeral of my courage. Quiet rage pulsed in my veins. Every offhand remark or stray argument became a trigger, like pulling the pin on a grenade I had to swallow whole. But I knew better than to let it out, didn’t I? Or so I thought.
God help a woman who dares to dream.
Holding back, feeling stuck when I write a scene that’s too raw, too intense. Feeling ashamed for coming up with the idea. The “what ifs” multiplying in my head like roaches in the dark. What if it gets published? What will they say?
Even writing this now, I feel that same shame boiling under my skin. But this is me reclaiming my voice. This is me refusing to let them decide the bounds of my imagination.
I don’t even know where to direct this rage. At the people who thought it was okay to drop words like grenades into my heart, shrapnel lodged so deep I had to numb the pain to survive? At myself, for letting them? For caging my own brilliance so I wouldn’t scare anyone? Maybe it’s all of that. Maybe my rage has metastasised into shame. Maybe that’s why I censor myself now, why I hesitate at the edge of the abyss I used to dive into without fear.
That’s not who I was before. I built myself a cage and locked it, never noticing I’d swallowed the key.
This? This is my retaliation. Quiet, deliberate rebellion. My voice belongs to me, and nothing you say can strip it away. No comment or insult is greater than the freedom of a blank page.
Words are dangerous.
The realisation hit me: these harmless little letters strung together can build kingdoms or raze them to ash. They can convince you this is how the world must be. That’s the trick. That’s the danger. That’s the power that draws me in like a moth to hellfire.
Psychological thrillers aren’t just stories—they’re blueprints of human nature. Manipulative. Seductive. Honest in ways polite society can’t stomach. They show the mastermind at work, the subtle sleight-of-hand that has readers gasping, flinching, thrilled to be deceived. I want that. I want to make them squirm. I want to make myself squirm.
And damn, I feel it in my veins, sparking to life as I write this.
But subconsciously, I held back. I perfected my poker face. I controlled my rage and my reaction. But how the hell do you control how you feel?
I buried it so deep it started to strangle the very voice that brought me to life.
I am unlearning. I am giving myself permission to stride into that freedom like I own it—because I do. It’s not uncharted territory. It’s my kingdom.
If I make them flinch? Good. Mission accomplished.
For the longest time I wrote with an invisible board of censors in my head, watering down scenes, smoothing the edges until they were palatable to people who would never read them anyway. I think I started unlearning the moment I started Vinnie’s Corner on this blog. The moment I told myself these words deserve to live outside my laptop. That they don’t need to resonate with anyone but me. That if I’m writing them, they hold value.
I am crawling my way back into a space I once claimed with reckless, radiant confidence.
The second draft is slower than I want it to be. But I feel relief knowing it won’t be apologetic. It will be unhinged, unafraid and raw, the way I want it to be.
I know I’m holding back because what I really want to write is always an afterthought. I catch myself second-guessing every brainstorm, dismissing ideas as “too much” before they even have a chance to breathe. I have six half-born first drafts languishing in a folder because the spark didn’t burn long enough to keep me there.
But this time, I forced myself to stay. To ask why.
And the answer was simple.
I want to write something breathtaking, manipulative and dark. I want to drag the reader by the hair into the shadows and dare them to look.
But I was afraid. Afraid that someone would fail to separate me from my work. That they’d smear me with my own ink.
Have you ever watched an author interview where they’re asked why they wrote the bloodstained truths of human nature, and instead of respecting the craft, they question their morals? As if curiosity about the savage undercurrent of humanity makes you criminal. As if art should come with a certificate of moral purity. Unrealistic, but that’s how I was made to feel. Instead of asking what made me curious, I heard, why this? Maybe write a story that is…less intense? Or maybe fiction that paints reality. Isn’t crime also a reality?
Makes no sense.
I feel like I’m unlearning just by writing this and daring to show it to you. This is my retaliation. A revolution scrawled in ink and fury.
Because the moment you stop caring that your friends and family will read it, the moment you stop giving a damn about their approval, you taste real freedom.
I guess I’m still learning. Tasting it in stolen sips.
But I remember now.
I’m unearthing every buried scream, writing it exactly as it is. They told me to calm down. Instead, I chose to write it all.