Writing and words

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug” Mark Twain

Good writing, writes itself. It happens when the writer is surprised by what’s being written.

When words come unannounced, at the right time.

Yet, as a writer, one would not set off on the path of writing, were it not for words.

Words remain a necessary but not a sufficient condition to good writing.

What makes good writing, good, are the right words.  

Some writers, like Rushdie use plenty of right words. His is feast of words. It has the same effect of a floodlight. His words Illuminate and dazzle. It feels as though he is making music, painting a picture and administering you a hallucinogenic drug at the same time.   

Others, like Coetzee, prefer the laser beam. Lean, taut, with sudden surprises of generosity, which makes the writing all the more delectable. Too close to the bone, too close for comfort.

Yet, if one were to wait for the right words, nothing would get written. Days would pass in the state of writerly daze.

So, the first step to writing is to write badly, bloatedly, awkwardly. And do it every day.

Then, through practice, the right words will come. Lean in. 

Tuesdays with Mary

It is the season for rolling over.

It is a season that is maniacally social and intensely personal. There is too much happening and yet not much. Hazy and potent, of inebriation and awakening. That’s how promises are.

It is a season not for guilt but reconciliation. Ideally, with oneself. There’s the whole of next year for the rest of the world.  

It’s the season for the accounting of the changes within. Keeping the agreeable ones and discarding the rest. It is the season to know what is best. It is the season when one can’t hurt.            

It is the season of following new tunes, and then wandering into finding lost and forgotten ones. Of knowing how much we once knew. And that dreams of the past can be dreams again.         

Not so simple

This is an experiment to write sparsely. You know, lean but not famished. I have always found it tough to write in simple language. I also think the keyboard complicates our language; encourages, eggs us on to writes complex sentences; use long, overbearing words, like I just did. The computer screen instantly absolves us of this folly, even gives us the sanction.

Writing in simple language, without trying to impress with impressive words in my opinion requires two things: ability to think deeply, so deep that language becomes merely the messenger and not the content. Its the poet's job to be lyrical, the writer must only communicate. Of course you may disagree and at times I'd agree with you on that.

The second thing that enables us to write using simple language is conviction in what you are communicating; a supreme belief. Using simple language to communicate with clarity is not easy if you have been corrupted with the power words tend to have. It is a great deceit, and some would say the scourge of humanity.

Is simplicity the greater style? I read somewhere that simplicity is the best sophistication. So true. Simplicity is sinew. It is the absence of flab. It’s the oxygen without the airs. There I go again. So difficult to contain myself from bullshitting. Blame it on words, the ultimate intoxication. Its funny when I see various religious text urging us to guard ourselves against intoxication, it’s the ultimate irony.

It may take a long time for someone to develop their own style of writing, if ever. But it takes forever to develop a simple style of writing. Simplicity is infinity. It is both mastery and submission.

my first blog

with such a tepid headline, guess i won't have too many readers, but this a sort of a test post to believe that i can actually blog ... more on my next post. sure will have lots to write for anyone who cares to read