All of us have gone through phases where the eternal spring of writing seems to dry up. We can sit at the computer for hours but when we look at the screen, all we have is a few lines, and those too aren’t worth much. Thanks to technology, all we end up wasting is our time, unlike the old days when along with time a lot of paper was wasted too too. Today, all we need to do is hit delete and start all over again.
Why does the spring dry up though?
One of the major reasons for this happening is that we try too hard to write something that will impress our readers. We read a lot of things, and some of them leave an impression. We, in turn, want to write something that leaves an impression on others. But, try as hard as we may, we fail to come up with that masterpiece. The harder we try, the worse it gets. It’s like trying to hold quicksilver in your hands – it just keeps slipping out.The reason is simple, we are trying to write in a style, and on a subject that is not our own. If we don’t know about a subject how can we possible write about it?
A classic example of the above case are the “how to blog” and “make money blogs” that have spawned the Internet over the past decade. The reason for this spurt is the fact that some of the blogs that talk about blogging and making money are actually very successful. Many people want to take the easy way out and want to replicate this success without ensuring that they have enough firepower in their arsenal to keep the blog going. Not surprisingly, many of these blogs die a premature death.
The similar thing happens with writing too. We look at subjects that have been delicately handled by other writers. We enjoy reading their work, and we want to write something similar to what they have written. But, we fail because we forget that what had impressed us was not merely good writing, but the in-depth treatment the writer had provided to the subject. Such an in-depth treatment can come only if you have sufficient knowledge and experience on the subject you are writing about.
Jeffrey Archer, the famous author, puts it beautifully in the following lines:
If you look at the work of Jane Austen — arguably the greatest novelist that ever lived — she lived in a small town, had four sisters who couldn’t get married. So she writes a book about four sisters who couldn’t get married, a story about three sisters who couldn’t get married, a story about two sisters who couldn’t get married, and a story about one who couldn’t marry herself off. All of them are masterpieces. So you write well if you’re an author who writes about what he has an experience of. When young people come to me and say, “Jeffrey I want to write a book. Should I write a ghost story, should I write a thriller?” I say write what you know about, because if you get that over to the public and if it’s a good story, they’ll want to turn the page.
There are many advantages of being born and brought up in a bilingual country. One grows up learning, and interacting with, two languages. These advantages, like all good things, come with a few drawbacks.
A wise man once said, “If you want to improve something, you better start by measuring that thing.”
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