Jargogled Impressions.

The byline on my blog says “I write as I please” – it was a cheeky attempt at excusing myself from the expectations of writing clearly and usefully. For a long time, I believed in the idea that writing should be more than just messaging, that it should be an experience. But I tended to emphasize the experience part more, resulting in articles that were glanced at by many but read by none. I was under the impression that somehow the right kind of readers would gravitate naturally towards my writing. But in any case, writing isn’t something I am doing for others – or so I thought. I wanted my writing to be useful, but I found it too cumbersome to edit and rewrite to make sure I use my reader’s time well.

But I have found over the years that writing, like any art form, is better when designed with others in mind. Writing to be read is a forcing function to write more, write better, and write clearly. Even if you may not aspire to have a wide following for your writing, you would do well to write with others in mind because, as Feynman would say, that’s the best way to learn!

I maintain a personal blog on Tumblr which reads more like a journal, but its private and meant only for my own eyes. When I trawl through the trash that exists in those logs, I realize that while that forum is good for capturing my raw thoughts, they are not helping me improve my writing. And without discernible improvement, it’s hard to sustain interest in an endeavor no matter how passionate you are about it. At some point in your life, you will end up weighing its benefits versus the energy drain it eventually becomes and end up relegating it to another failure of your pursuits.

Writing is as much a stress reliever for me as running is. Even if unstructured and primarily stream of consciousness, I have stuck on with writing here on this blog for the sole reason that it offers me a medium to unload my thoughts and maybe probe a bit deeper than what I can hold on to in my head. As writing is sequential and linear, the thoughts can be taken a bit farther and in that I sought to find the meditative absorption that I often find lacking in real life. Sometimes, when I start writing something I end up learning 50%-60% more than what I started with and that’s the outcome I have designed my writing around.

But your writing needs to be useful for others too. As I have realized this, I have attempted to tweak my writing style to be more direct, concise, simple, and useful. But am not close to where I want to be as my attempts have been thwarted by a lack of discipline – to show up consistently with my writing, to edit and rewrite and make myself clearer, to focus on the topics that I can hope to bring some novelty through my writing.

There is a lot of content on creating content – as with novelists and authors, writing about the process and principles of writing seems to be a very meta but a very common thing that people in these professions do. And it does make sense too – sort of like turning your process into a product. And by doing so, you end up finessing your process too. Writing about the process and the why behind writing makes you a better writer. In any case, the common tips on writing well and prolifically focuses on maintaining a system across intake of new ideas, refinement and categorization into themes, maintaining a funnel to collect factoids and anecdotes, fixing yourself with supplements to write during whichever hour of the day that works for you, etc.

There’s evidently a ton you can do to prepare yourself to write. But nothing works better than, well, just writing. As William Zinsser says, writing is an agonizingly tiring, painful and boring process. Who does it regularly and determinedly, does well and picks up the skills to be “naturally” good at it. You don’t necessarily need a system if you can soldier ahead with a heated passion for writing. The systems build themselves if you are so inclined.

And that’s where this construct of A-million-words (AMW) comes into play for me. A self-enforced goal that is as clear in its aspirations as they can be. To write a million words in essays on topics that are of interest to me. I started with the idea that making it time boxed, say 1000 words in 20minutes, would keep me focused. But it in fact became a crutch for me to write trash and be done with the “busywork” of writing. While it let me march through to the different editions of this endeavor, I think they did little else. The real why behind AMW is to learn to write better and prepare myself for when the daemon strikes. Biding my time building a muscle for writing well and writing fast.

Orwell’s “ I write as I please” in fact came from a series of columns he wrote for Tribune after resigning from BBC. With a free reign over the topics, he could write and the digressions he could make, the columns stand the test of times as masterpieces on English language. His essay topics ranged from a dissertation on fascism, to theories of ideas and progress, to personal experiences as a reader.

Essays are meant to be an exercise in chasing the interesting. It’s the process of peeking down the rabbit hole and seeing what strikes as exciting and boldly venturing forth. If the writer does not do that, it ceases to be exciting for him. And when that happens, the readers would be able to identify that quickly, sometimes in the first sentence itself.

So, the byline stays. However, what pleases me must be clear to my readers. And if it pleases a few, they can join me in this journey.