Tag: Writing

“Hand-writing” and the sweet spot

I’ve often wondered if we’ve lost the charm of living to the added convenience called the digital life that we’ve constructed around us. I say that because in my increasingly busy life as a content designer at a software company, I spend the majority of my time in front of screens. Therefore, sitting down to practice handwriting is a much-needed relief for me.

So, here I pen (drumrolls for the obvious pun!) my thoughts on why I think writing (by hand), the analog experience, is the sweet spot.

The sweet spot between fiction and function

I am yet to hand-write my first fiction. All I know is that I am a compulsive re-writer. I re-write more than I write. So, typing away is easy. Writing by hand can be difficult. But I do not deny the possibility it lends, for I can think at a pace that matches my pen strokes. This lends me that extra second to compose my thoughts in a better way.

While I agree that I cannot always come up with suitable articulations, expressions, metaphors, phrases, or words, I do not want to be too bogged down by the pressure of editing just yet. I do not want to become so busy re-writing and editing that I forget to write. To reach new shores, I must first set sail. All I need is a pen, some paper, and a determination to begin the voyage.

Of the many pages I have proudly inked with quotes from popular authors.
Featured here is Ranga Abhimanyu (ebonite) with Magna Carta titanium nib and inked with Pilot Iroshizuku Shin-Kai.

The sweet spot between being an introvert and an extrovert

All textbook definitions of introvert are incorrect. Yes, by design, I am an introvert; I am principally concerned with my affairs. Yet I like to flaunt how my favorite ink flows through the pen and shades away or sheens as it dries on a paper. I like to show off my earned collection of fountain pens. I like telling people why using a fountain pen is a hobby they too must cultivate. The topic of fountain pens gets me started. I WILLINGLY talk.

Does that sound like “someone who is pushed to oneself” to you? But then why would I talk about fountain pens to those who don’t even know how to hold one properly? “What a wasteful transition, that is,” the ambivert within me opines.

The sweet spot between the analog and digital worlds

For once, it is nice to see the world go schmoozing past while you perch by languidly on your thoughts. It is comforting beyond belief. Calming. Like cracking the neck or stretching your back. One moment, you are in chaos. In another, you are mentally on a different planet. If chaos is where I had lost myself, calmness is where I rediscover myself. Amidst that calmness, I run my fingers along those carefully curated curves. In my hands is that unmatched, machined (or hand-turned) delight that, whenever meets paper, translates my wordless thoughts into tangible volumes of pages. Oh, that crack of the neck. Oh, that pen put to paper.

Writing and Everything Else

The theory that the fictional characters draw parallels with life events is as much true as the thought that the writing impacts and inspires us. And I say this because, on umpteen occasions, I’ve gulped down the bitterness and dryness of words before they began to moisten my mouth and eyes with their truest selves. Yet, in the list of everything that ever has quenched my thirst and kept me alive as I have crawled through my deserted nothingness, writing is at the top. My writing has drawn a lot of inspiration from my life and experiences, and in return has equally blessed me with awe.

Good writing, I have always believed and found to be true, is the next step of despair. And yet, with each passing year, I see more and more aspiring writers stopping at despair. They, somehow, don’t have the energy to follow their dreams, if they have had any. In my case, the only thing that has stood by me ever since my introverted self has begun to surface more often, it is writing. All I do is return its favor. Writing, thus, is both a cause and a consequence for me. People keep asking me random questions. I answer those random questions with nonrandom answers.

Someone asked me the other day, for instance, “what makes you write?” I replied, “the same thing that makes you breathe, go to bed, wake up again the next morning, and go to (or sit down to) work.” I said, “We all are machines running on some fuel. Writing is my fuel. You have your own version of it.”

“But how do you do that,” someone else had asked. I said that writing was akin to sitting by the lake and watching the ripples as you throw stones in the lake. What you get as you unsettle the lake bed and its cozy arrangement of quietude is the ripples that bring up what lays buried underneath. Those are some precious thoughts. I only take a closer look at those, while most fail to acknowledge their presence. This process of acknowledging, churning, observing, and translating those ripples of thoughts into words is both encouraging and enchanting. Writing is quite like learning to live. The most important thing is to take the first step. The second most important is to follow along with your senses, for they are never wrong.

The part of my answer that I skipped deliberately was that they didn’t continue to follow along. A lot of aspiring—and sometimes inspiring—individuals do not remain loyal to writing. I attribute most of my writing to the allegiance I have shown toward this experience. Even before people had begun formally introducing me as a writer, I had taken the pains of going through the labor of birthing ideas. This umbilical connection that I have with some of the posts I wrote more than a decade ago makes me a possessive parent. My sweat-soaked pillows are a testimony of how and when the right ideas were born. I’ve taken the trouble of noting it down, sometimes in my sleep.

“But I don’t have the time and the skills.” Well, I don’t doubt that you have a packed schedule and that writing requires quietude. But when you can’t let your mind astray, is that not the best time for you to focus on moments within the moments of your life? Then how can you deceive your mind to pay attention to only quantifiable, tangible activities, while you must focus on enjoying this transformation? It’s as much a matter of choice: you choose results, I adhere to the process. Yet it comes down to what efforts you put in to make it an effortless read. The beauty, cleverness, logic, or wits are only the devices with which you decorate your writing. The tricks are easy to know about but difficult to put into practice. So, what you as a novice might find hard to install might come to my stolid soul with spontaneity.

It all comes to two things: compassion and emotions. For the human within you to leap over that stile and walk the then lush green lands in soothing gleams of rays, you must have compassion. You have to live life before living it. You have to live life without ever living it. Only then you embark on this journey.