The How of it

Really how do I write? (It’s a double edged question I know but I am going to take only one edge this time)

Well how? That is, how do I write?

It seems to be like an internal stream with me, my thoughts flow just like that, in the most natural of ways, they jump from this to that, that to the other, it’s a sort of monkey prose, there may not be any discernible order and recognizable pattern. Of course they are not the grandest of thoughts they have been called senseless before.

I am not saying everyone should follow my example. Let the others write the classics and the important things.

But I beg of you, just try writing rubbish some time. Everyone can write the other stuff, the serious stuff. Try writing stuff for change. Bet you won’t be able to go through with the exercise. You will feel buffeted by unseen forces, chained to unbreakable barriers, you would feel fear, terror and horror.

How many of you would dare do that?

Some don’t like this silly attitude of mine, they are the serious types. They want moving and vibrant stuff on display. Alright, even I can do that, in fact everyone can do that. Writing serious stuff is the easiest of all things, you have models before you, you have the words and expressions before you, you just need to arrange them in the most acceptable format and you are done.

But the problem with me is that I rely more on the unconscious rather than on the conscious. All great writers do, but saying this does not make me a great writer. I don’t even want to be called a writer , all I am doing is to express myself, may be in the way the expressionists do. I etch impressions, may be they are sketchy, there may even be big gaps in them, in ideation, in execution, there may be chunks missing.

Well you know that is what you guys are for, I work with the assumption that the readers, even me while reading it sometime after are much more intelligent than the writer , they bring their life into it, their knowledge and information into it. Like T. S Eliot used to say poetry grows and achieve greater mass as time passes. I don’t know if I am using the exact expression that he used, but the meaning was the newer readers would bring their awareness into the work of art.

That is what I am aiming for; I would like to provide a mere skeleton to them to work with, to make them bring in their feelings, experiences, world views and enrich it. I would like to provide a mere frame work to weave their dreams on. Dreams? Yes dreams, dreams need not always be pleasant.

Don’t confuse it with the body of writing of Saussure et al. Their work begins after the scribes work is finished, mine goes the other way round. It offers a chunk of raw meat ( that is, if you are a non-veg, let it be a shapeless roll of dough for the veggies) you can add any ingredients to it cook it , burn it, roll it over stakes, steam it or do anything you want( in your minds of course).

That is all there to it. But this doesn’t say anything about the delight I get from writing. Why do I do it? What do I get out of it? Words, nothing but words, I am an inept version of Keats in that regard. I may not have his command over words, but I am not a lesser devotee.