A few days back I made a long face in front of an online friend using emoticon saying that I wasn't getting a sentence as good as I wished. She reassuringly said: “you'll get it, just keep trying.” Next she typed something like “you don't practice, if you practice daily it'd be lot easier for you.” She meant writing (or should I say typing), I know every writing manual or 'How to write' book says: “put away a few words daily – Practice.”
But, I never paid heed to it. Being lazy to type, my excuse being, writing is just an extension of thinking. So, as long as I can think I can write. And, thoughts are rumbling in my head throughout the day or to be precise until this laptop comes in front of me, then more important things sprout up seeking my attention, checking emails is the foremost. Then looking for friends online and telling Hi to few of them. The list goes on like this, and the actual writing rarely happens, sacrificing the thoughts that glowed during the day in the subconscious as being mundane or pedestrian not deserving the effort to be typed out and shared by the night.
Here is a glimpse of the Master Writer Marquez's take on practice in the beginning of his book Strange Pilgrims.
When I began Chronicles of Death Foretold, in 1979, I confirmed the fact that in pauses between books I tended to lose the habit of writing and it was becoming more and more difficult for me to begin again. That is why between October 1980 and March 1984, I set myself the task of writing a weekly opinion column for newspapers in several countries, a s a kind of discipline for keeping my arm in shape. Then it occurred to me that my struggle with the material in the notebook was still a problem of literary genres and they should really be newspaper pieces, not stories. Except after publishing five columns based on the notebook, I changed my mind again: They would be better as films. That was how five movies and a television serial were made.
My friend BG sharing similar thoughts on his blog here.
But, I never paid heed to it. Being lazy to type, my excuse being, writing is just an extension of thinking. So, as long as I can think I can write. And, thoughts are rumbling in my head throughout the day or to be precise until this laptop comes in front of me, then more important things sprout up seeking my attention, checking emails is the foremost. Then looking for friends online and telling Hi to few of them. The list goes on like this, and the actual writing rarely happens, sacrificing the thoughts that glowed during the day in the subconscious as being mundane or pedestrian not deserving the effort to be typed out and shared by the night.
Here is a glimpse of the Master Writer Marquez's take on practice in the beginning of his book Strange Pilgrims.
When I began Chronicles of Death Foretold, in 1979, I confirmed the fact that in pauses between books I tended to lose the habit of writing and it was becoming more and more difficult for me to begin again. That is why between October 1980 and March 1984, I set myself the task of writing a weekly opinion column for newspapers in several countries, a s a kind of discipline for keeping my arm in shape. Then it occurred to me that my struggle with the material in the notebook was still a problem of literary genres and they should really be newspaper pieces, not stories. Except after publishing five columns based on the notebook, I changed my mind again: They would be better as films. That was how five movies and a television serial were made.
My friend BG sharing similar thoughts on his blog here.
5 comments:
True is it not. Write to write...
clap clap clap
Your friend is right!
I remember reading an interview with Amitav Ghosh in which he said that if he didnt write for a few days, he seemed to lose his pitch!
I'll leave you with a Thoreau quote:
"Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with"
very true..
'the actual writing rarely happens, sacrificing the thoughts that glowed during the day in the subconscious as being mundane or pedestrian not deserving the effort to be typed out and shared by the night.' Excellent thought and crafting of the sentence.
That post was fast.Hope you are practising after that insight...:)
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