How to write? What to write?

How to start writing ?

Many people ask me the secret of writing blogs. Frankly, there is no secret. You just start putting your feelings on the paper, the way they come to your mind or the way you would talk to other person. While talking, we never get the question  like ‘how to start talking?’.  

We just do it naturally. But writing on paper obstructs us. We become conscious of words and their meaning, start thinking about their appropriateness and many options crop in our mind. Here the our brain takes over mind and tries to scrutinize the sentences we wish to write. The dilemma thus created,  puts an end to our writing attempt.

The solution to this problem is that first write whatever comes to your mind without thinking its appropriateness or choice of words. Let it be irrelevant. Once to practice to write unobstructed, you will be able to choose and put the words properly.

 I remember to have read one exercise which narrated how to remove starting hurdle in writing. It is as follows 

Step 1- Take a paper, pen, make good writing arrangement, close the door of room not to get disturbed. Take the pen in hand. Select left top corner of blank paper and  go on writing for ten minutes. Never stop for a moment or otherwise you will get stuck at that point. Our conscious mind will not allow to continue writing. It would start reviewing and finding errors and suggest alternatives. You would get completely confused leading to inaction.

Step 2 – Start  practicing initially just by copying written or printed material or information about yourself , your liking or place where you live.

Step 3 – Now you can move to next important step ie what to write? In school, you must have wriiten essays and stories from points or broken sentences. The same trick can be applied here. Jot down the main points and then try to elaborate them

Even if people advocate to prepare a plan of what to write and t5hen write systematically , human mind generally does not like bounded channels. Hence initially write whatever you feel and know in any manner without any order or restriction. It is very easy to sort it out and put it in prper order after the content is present.

Writing Non fiction

 Retired Chief Engineer Late Shri. V. H. Kelkar once had told me that when they were preparing regional plan for Sangli district. They submitted the report to government with a preamble “But for a lack of sufficient time, the report has become very large and exhaustive. It would have been possible to concise if more time period and resources were at hand.”

 This indicates that making the article small and to the point requires more time and thinking.

My PhD guide, Dr. G. D. Agrawal used to tell me ‘I shall not accept the thesis, if merely huge collection of observations are presented unless they are necessary and preplanned to test the hypothesis.’ His own thesis he said was based on only 36 experiments, but those wrere designed to give the desired output.

Writing Fiction –

 Mere description of places and events do not create the necessary visual impression in the mind of readers. Hence, it is necessary to describe background of events, your feelings and thought reflections. While describing the speech of somebody, do not give onle the text of speech, but give it personality touch as regards the speaker’s look,  hi8s habits and gestures. It is ecessary to mention some minor events and guest appearances of people in the scene eventhough they may not have further links or aid the story flow. In actual event, we observe many things which are not not related but their presence in description makes the event more realistic.