On Writing
It’s 5 14 am on a Saturday morning. I just finished having Sehri before Roza. It’s a quiet morning. Yet my mind has many thoughts. I want to have a conversation but do not know with whom. Perhaps I wish to have a conversation with myself. That is where writing comes in. I find writing therapeutic.
Recently, I read a book on How to Write Well. It’s a simple book written in the early 20th century that lays down some facts that anybody who has been writing on a semi-regular basis understands intuitively. Here I will try to capture some of those lessons.
Writing is thinking. With the act of writing, you put down your thoughts in a precise and flowing manner. Quite often, when we think in our minds, the thoughts are clustered, and before we know it our minds become exhausted. Writing in that way is an unloading of your thoughts on a piece of paper. Simply put, some of the most enjoyable writing I have done is when I do it without consciously thinking. My fingers on the keyboard and my brain are in sync. I shed the fear of judgment, I shed the fear of vulnerability and just put pen to paper.
Writing precisely is more challenging, that's where the process of an edit comes through. After you’ve put down your raw thoughts on paper, I then do one quick read of everything. In this process, I try to simplify my usage of words. Try to communicate the idea with brevity.
The act of editing and creating uses two different brain centers. The creative needs free flow and the editor needs the critical lens. Hence, it makes sense to do these two processes separately. Some of the best writers I have read about write their best pieces in flows. They write and write and then go through a process of edit. So if you would like to get into this habit as well I would advise doing it like that. It takes away the need to be perfect and keeps your work authentic.
Where am I going with this writing business in general. I don’t precisely know, but that is okay. Not everything in life needs to have an end goal in mind, in fact I would hazard to say, that many of the most valuable things in life do not need to be a means to an end, the act is in itself an end in its own right.
What sparks my creativity in writing? It’s so diverse. I have found that when I read more, I write more. Reading activates a part of your brain that starts getting your thoughts flowing, life, as we live it on a day-to-day basis, is so mundane that reading elevates you from that monotony and allows you to have a conversation with another mind.
Speaking of conversation, the second source of inspiration is a great conversation. It could be a conversation with anyone, your uber driver, spouse, friend, or sibling. The beauty of great conversation is that it allows you to get your mind in sync and from the conclusion of the conversation you leave enriched with an idea that you did not previously have.
The third source of inspiration is life in general. There are moments in time that would just leave you inspired, this could be anything and it depends on the kind of person you are. For me, I derive immense inspiration from nature, from sports, from people going about their business. This is where individuality shines through. The same scene that I see you can see quite differently and if you allow yourself to be inspired you can write something about it that would be a delight to read.
In conclusion, I never thought of myself as a writer, I always thought I was a doer. Somehow in my mind I thought these were two different paths in life but as I understand it now, I think they are two sides of the same coin. If you think well, you do well and if you think well you can write about it too.
Thank you,
Mohsin
