Why I write (and why you should try it too)
I grew up with a father that wrote every day. He would wake up at 5AM, the dark of the night still pressing on us, and frogs in the wasteland next to our flat croaking loudly.
My father would sit cross-legged like a yogi in our living room, place a 1'x1.5' teak plank across his lap, place his notebook on the plank, uncap his Hero pen, and write. From my room, I would hear the scratch of his fountain pen on paper, my grandma snoring in her bed, and the frogs croaking away. My dad wrote many things: poems, essays, short stories, and op-ed pieces for local newspapers. Most of what he wrote, however, no one read. They would lay without a whisper between the lined pages of his bound notebook. This didn't matter to him. He wrote because he HAD to write. He sent some of his creations to magazines and newspapers. Some he would read to me on warm evenings under moonlight and ask for feedback.
I was no stranger to writing when growing up. From a very young age, I wanted to write. From a very young age, I had a love for words and books.
I read a lot in the years I lived in Canada: everything from Virginia Woolf to Richard Dawkins to Vikram Seth to Natalie Goldberg to Douglas Adams. I started writing frequently for local magazines, just like my father had done back home. Writing, I realized was a pleasant activity, but getting my writing published was HARD WORK! I wrote first drafts, and then reviewed and revised and reviewed and revised multiple times. I spent hours on a 1000-word essay that a magazine would ultimately pay me a $100 for. I was not going to make a living as a writer, I decided. I read a lot of books on writing, wrote every day, and continued to strive to become a good writer. My academic writing got a vigorous shine when I submitted by dissertation to my advisor. Every line in my thesis was analyzed, the veracity and the logic of it questioned. The first draft of my thesis was returned with so many red markings that the pages looked like a murder scene.
Why I write (and why you should too)
Obviously, my early years with a writer father had an influence. But I have come to appreciate writing for its multiple benefits to my work and life:
1- Writing clearly helps you think clearly. You refine your logic and your arguments by seeing them spelt out on paper.
2- Communicating ideas has become as critical to work in the information age as using arrows would have been to our ancestors. Writing helps you organize your ideas to communicate them better.
3- Writing helps you sharpen your focus. When you sit down to write, and face the tyranny of the blank page, you have no choice but to focus. With practice, this focus gets stronger and transferrable to other areas of your life.
4- Writing is a channel for the dammed river of creativity inside you. Humans are driven to create. Whether we create a delicious meal for our family, or the Sistine Chapel, the drive to create and the joy of creating is integral to human experience. Writing is an accessible outlet for that creativity.
5- Writing helps you conquer your fear of rejection. Over my years of professional experience, I have learned that many of us battle with a fear of rejection so strong it threatens to eat us alive. Every time you write something to be read by others, you put yourself out there for critique and rejection. But by doing so, you learn to deal with the inner talk that tries to stop you because it doesn't want you to be rejected. You learn to quiet it to a mere hiss you can then ignore in other activities in your life too.
6- Writing helps you share your experiences and the knowledge gained from them. Language evolved not just so our ancestors can collaborate and kill a mammoth. Language helped us share our experiences with each other. This sharing helped us learn, entertain, and influence action - all things you can do with writing.
7- There is a philosophical school of thought that consciousness is really self-consciousness. I.e., you notice yourself as a being because others notice you as a being. Whether you agree with this philosophy or not, there is almost a primal need we have to be heard, to matter to others, to leave behind something of yourself. Writing helps you do that.
I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn. ― Anne Frank
I recommend that you try your hand at writing too.
You don't need to get a degree in English to get started. Writing classes and workshops can help but are not necessary. You don't need to comb through the shelves of a library to research a topic.
You can start with yourself and your lived experience.
You can write about what you're most familiar with. But as you write, try to delve deeper into your experience. Swim in the emotional waters of it. Try to look at it from different perspectives and get to the nugget of truth that is not obvious. Think: what is it that you want your reader to take away after they give you their precious attention? Are you trying to persuade them to do something? Are you trying to teach? Are you trying to just let them see the world from a different lens? Make your point clearly and as powerfully as you can.
But all of this will not happen right away. When you start writing, you may find yourselves well and truly stuck. How do you unstick yourself? Anne Lammott, a writing coach, sets out two important activities for writers in her seminal book "Bird by Bird".
- Writing "Shitty First Drafts". Your first draft should be to just get your thoughts on the page. For your second draft, you can do surgery on your first draft and get the piece to do what you want it to do. Your final draft is about fixing up minor things to make it shipshape.
- Doing short writing assignments. I often come to my writing space, power up the computer, open Word, and stare. I don't know to what to write or where to begin. To get out of this, I tell myself that my job is to just write one short paragraph. Just a description of my father as he sat writing in our flat all those years ago. That's it.
These two tools have helped me a great deal. In addition, I use "outlining" to help me plan the structure of my work ahead of time. Of course, after I start writing, I let the flow take me in directions I hadn't planned, but I find it good to have some guardrails and mileposts.
Once you have written your third and final draft, you are now ready to publish it. Publishing it so you can get feedback from people is easier now than ever with blogging. Find your favorite Blogging provider (Wordpress, Weebly, Blogger, …), and hit Publish! Now forget about the post and move on to your next story. Your job is to just get your work out there, not to worry about how it is received.
When I sit down to write, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. — George Orwell
Here are some resources if you want to learn more.
I am sincere when I say developing a habit of writing will help you in many ways, most importantly in your work. Even if you are in tech, write more often. It will help you become a better communicator, which will give you a leg up in your career. You want to learn more? Here are some books that can help.
Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg
The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr and E.B.White
I hope you come to enjoy writing for its own sake as I do, but also for the benefits it offers your work and life. See you on your own blogging site!