WRITING IS NOT A RANDOM PROCESS

The oft quoted statistical exposition that, ‘writing is 99 per cent perspiration and 1 per cent inspiration,’ tends to emphasize 99 % at the cost of the more significant 1% . But, without the all important creative stimulus which constitutes that 1% per cent, even buckets of perspiration will fail to move a finger on the keyboard. Actually that one per cent is like the magician’s hat from which springs the freshly innovated lexical landscape.

Writing as a casual hobby depends on your capricious will to make a move and lets you breathe in a comfort zone. But the moment it develops into a passion, it morphs into a bug and chases you all the time and forces you to exorcise the mood demons out of your system. Then writing dons bossy attire demanding priority over everything else and becomes the toughest taskmaster ever. Its unique persona disallows any kind of dithering or procrastination.

However the process of writing is not a random activity, there is a method to it. First is the incubation of ideas phase in which you try to concentrate on capturing the chameleon like ideas in your conscious grip. Ideas are whimsical like the mighty kings. They don't care about the French Philosopher Descartes' dictum “I think therefore I am.” Moreover, the creative spark has the characteristic unpredictability of weather. It appears surprisingly like lightning in a fraction of a second, if not taken care of there and then, disappears as suddenly. Then you nag yourself for failing to catch it in the fly net and disabling it by spinning a yarn around it. (That is why note pads are kept under pillows to freeze the spark forthwith, in some form, even in the darkness of night.)

Securing the angle of your potential creative effort mentally you follow some technique, may be mind mapping of ideas through brainstorming sessions internally and then the free flow of writing spree around the basic theme. One caution, while pouring out the hidden impressions of your subconscious, the internal critic be manacled lest it should discourage you midway with its ifs and buts and the highly elusive ‘Apple Cart’ of ideas may bust like a soap bubble.

Writers are strange creatures. They feel intensely and write compulsively. Somerset Maugham rightly remarks, “Writers do not write because we want to, we write because we must.”

A writer’s keen vision and deep sensibilities gift him the ability to have psychological insights into situations and circumstances to enable him to build literary castles upon. For a writer the semantics of life acquire sharper, more abrasive edges which prick him, stir him and  keep him in continual unease. His life becomes an axis around which moves the bouts of success or failure.

Friends: What do you think of the process of writing?

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