WRITING
Don’t Fear Being Judged
Write as your authentic self
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On Writing
Writing is hard. You have to know what you think before you write. If not that, you have to know where to start about what you are thinking about before you write. Whatever you end up writing is going to be judged; that’s a good thing.
Judgment is good.
That’s how you know what you wrote made sense (although, that’s not always true). That’s exactly what I am writing about right now. Why stop pleasing the readers!
Everyone is weird in their own right — you are your own unique combination of thoughts and experiences. No one is like you. That gives you a voice. It doesn’t give your writing a voice, though. You have to find your voice by learning how to write. In an interview, Salman Rushdie said that it took him over half a decade after graduating from college to learn how to write. Writing is a skill. You can develop that skill.
You have to find your voice by learning how to write.
The Voice
The voice — it matters a lot. How you find that voice is up to you. No guidance can help you with that, or maybe it can. I think you’ll find that voice if you have a really strong urge to share what you have, to write about what you have.
What you have been through is your wealth. It will contribute to your thoughts and perception about the world as it is and also about what you imagine. Although, there’s no end of imagination, (not referring to Arundhati Roy’s piece on India becoming a Nuclear Power in the late 1990s), so you can imagine a whole lot.
What you have been through is your wealth. It will contribute to your thoughts and perception about the world as it is and also about what you imagine.
Organizing Your Thoughts
Writing about things you think about gives you a chance to organize your thoughts. It gives you a chance to rethink, revisit your own thoughts and reinforce them if required.
This principle of organization of thoughts is really essential. I have found it to be extremely useful. And, years down the line, it also gives you a perspective on the person you were. With time, memory moves the furniture. You remember things differently. Writing is how you preserve your old self. This is why being authentic is of the utmost importance. Because, now you are being authentic to yourself, not anyone else.
Writing publicly might just be one option — one can keep a journal, take notes, write poetry — whatever you think about things around you is going to come across and should come across when you are writing. That goes for fiction too, to some extent.
Writing about things you think about gives you a chance to organise your thoughts.
It’s important that you communicate what you want to communicate. Start with that. Don’t be afraid to be judged by what you write about. Criticism is essential. If it were not, there’d be no (or very little) improvement in any field. Write about whatever you want. Accept criticism, understand it, and if it resonates, spend time improving it. That’s what I am going to do, anyway.
