The Writers' Disillusionment

The delusion of  writing is self-created.
Picture ref: Sewickley Public Library

Write for the sake of writing. No need to be logical. No need to be coherent. No need to make sense. No need to put in energy. No need to disguise thought behind archaic linguistic symbolism.


When I started blogging some years back, I made a resolution to myself. The resolution was to write five hundred words everyday. It went on for a long time, it was like an exercise for me. Everyday sitting in front of my computer, I used to think what I write about. The words came intuitively, and I wrote as the stream of thoughts dictated me to write. Writing, just like any other activity, requires consistency. Consistency is the keyword here. Psychological research conducted in the field of habits tell us that if an activity is continued for sixty-six days, then it becomes a habit.

There is a rhythm in a habit. The body started to ache, if the normal routine is not followed. But then what happen with me? Why couldn't I continue with my old habit? I guess the answer is that writing didn't become my habit. It was more a way to exhaust my feeling in words. The text I wrote was just a polemic that I couldn't speak out normally. It was more like shouting in a million march. No matter how high you speak, the voice only echos back to you. The louder the shout, the greater the disillusionment that my words are working magic. I don't care what people think about whatever I said in the last years. I don't want them to be heard or taken heed of.

During the process of writing , I forget that the important activity was NOT to make sense of the world around me. The big annals of history and philosophy are full of crazy ideas. It is upon the person, to make sense of them. But the writer misses the point, these annals of history are not made to make sense at all. It is just a disillusionment that we find connection in the process of understanding. The universe is not forced to subscribe to our laws. It doesn't make sense that weird human logic is able to comprehend a tiny part of the universe and then assumes that everything everywhere else is forced to pertain the same laws.

So now I think that, I would just write. Write for the sake of writing. No need to be logical. No need to be coherent. No need to make sense. No need to put in energy. No need to disguise thought behind archaic linguistic symbolism. No need to rethink or reword. It should the pure flow that matters. This will my logic of writing from now on.
   

Deconstructing Procrastination

It has been a long time I updated my blog. Procrastination is said to be the most destructive habit of a writer. Da Vince suffered from it a lot, and so do I. This disease has been associated with many great writers, but with different reasons. The Urdu humorous writer Mustaq Yosufi says that he only writes when he has something to write. German author Kafka says that a writer writes from the abyss of depression.

I guess that both of them make a valid argument. Back in Pakistan, I used to think that rather then author tens of books like Stephen King, it is much better to write just a single book like "Gone with the wind" by Margret Mitchell.

Mitchell stopped writing after she publish her first book. The reason seems either to be procrastination or maybe -- as Kafka puts it -- she didn't has any thought to express. In this case, procrastination is the greatest bliss as it stops a person from authoring nonsense.

There are other reasons too for this disease. A drought of ideas or a mess of ideas also leads to a lazy behaviour. A person starts her/his day with learning something new, then goes on for reading the headlines, takes a break and then reads some stuff on 9gag, afterwards s/he jumps into university work and then finally ends his internet life on facebook, twitter, or any other social network.

Moreover, I forgot to mention the nuisance of smartphone culture, It is utterly ridiculous to see people messaging and chatting for hours without a shred of logic. Sometime I feel that they suffer from Anthropophobia. These "smart phone mammals" are a weird sort of human breed that doesn't know that there is a world outside waiting to be discovered. The smart phone mammals are suffering from the worst sort of procrastination as they have nothing to share. The outside world seems non-existent to them.

Procrastination in the above sense is neither a bliss nor a disease. It becomes a habit, or rather a necessity of life. Commonly, such people delay jobs as long as the deadline allows things to be delayed. Jobs are scheduled as late as possible, so that the smart phone can be get the longest usable time possible. The demigod, i.e. smartphone, gets the biggest time share as there is no other purpose of life.

I think that procrastination should only be enjoyed it if lets a person live like a human.