Writing Without Thinking

I am writing this essay without thinking. In fact, this is how I've decided to approach the rest of this "book." Here's why: because when you think, your fingers pause in their work. There's a moment of silence, when the cursor blinks at you, and that moment gives enough time for Fear with a capital F come closer, if not shroud you suddenly in a dark cloth, unable to do anything. You can't see, you can't think, you can't write. The only thing you can do is panic--what is this you've written so far, this measly paragraph that's pretending to be a strong opening, this example that's cliched, trying too hard? Why are you wasting people's time? Why are you continuing to disappoint them? There are people waiting to read this and all you've given them these past few weeks is silence.

These last few fears are specific to me (not) writing Kadambari at present, but I'm not the only one who has or will experience these fears.

I went back and read the previous essay I wrote about first drafts, and the words seemed to speaking to me unkindly. Or rather, the words were just doing their job; it was me who could see the lies glinting beneath.

But even that is an inadequate description. I didn't lie when I said that you must finish things; I've always found more use for a finished draft than any unfinished one. I didn't lie when I talked about perfectionism.

Everything I said was true. But they were just one version of the truth about the process of writing. And just because something is true does not mean I believe it.

So while I know that it's more "efficient" to finish things, I haven't always done so. When the writing has gotten really difficult, when I'm out of ideas, when my own story seems utterly boring to me, when I feel like there's no point to what I am saying, I have abandoned drafts without finishing them.

In fact, incomplete drafts made up quite a significant part of the total writing I did during my 3-year 5-month writing streak. I don't want writing to be difficult, but that doesn't necessarily prevent it from being so.

Writing is both easy and difficult depending on your skill, your experience, your interest in what your writing, who you're writing for, among other things. I've experiences all shades of it. It was my determination to not tell anyone that they shouldn't write that I let my overly-optimistic self show through in my previous essays. I don't like telling anyone that some people just can't write. Maybe there's some truth to that, maybe they really can't. But perhaps when people say that, they mean "this person cannot write well" (however "well" is defined) and not, as I am trying to think of it, "put one word after the other to produce a text" (which is something every person who can read and write has done at some point in their lives).

I don't want to gatekeep. Writing is both a profession and a hobby, and I didn't want to let those interested in former leave this space thinking that it's not something they can do. Sure, maybe they'll give it a try and discover they don't like writing and would rather spend their time knitting. But I wanted to make the reader feel that they could try, that they did not need anyone's permission to do so.

The Flexibility of a First Draft

I've written about this problem before, this tendency to accommodate everyone leading to "advice" that's quite generic. One reason for this is that my feelings about this project keep changing. I cannot decide what Kadambari is, exactly, even though I've tried to define it. The "About" page goes in more detail, but at its core it's me writing about what I know about writing.

The thing about that premise is that I have continued writing other things after I began this project, and because I've continued writing, I've continued learning about writing. Even during days when I've done nothing but think and write about the essays here, I've been learning--writing about writing has taught me more about writing, as has this recent period when I didn't write at all.

That's a very wordy way of saying that writing isn't something you're ever done with, and a part of me wants to go back and edit it so that it's clearer, but I will not let it, because that would defeat the whole point of this essay, if not the project itself. There's no point at which I can say, not at such a young age, that I know everything about writing. When I began this project, I defined an assumed audience of young writers. That established a sort of hierarchy--me at 23 speaking to a bunch of hypothetical 16-year-old aspiring authors.

But the more I think about the essays I've written so far and the essays I'm yet to write, the more appropriate I find it to think of this project as me sharing my class notes with fellow students. "Here's what I learned about writing today. Maybe this will help you too."

What this does is, firstly, remove the pressure of treating this project so seriously that the expectations prevent me from writing at all--something I've experienced at several points since starting. Secondly, because I allow myself to just be a learner of writing than a teacher of sorts, I get to be more honest and vulnerable not just about writing in general, but about the ups and downs of this project too--this is the first time I'm writing a book-length work. It's supposed to be a first draft, but because I'm doing it in public and there's a Ko-fi link attached, the Demon of Perfectionism that lives in my head has taken charge.

And so after I write each essay, I spend hours, if not days, trimming, editing, adding, removing. A true rough draft is just word after word, sentence after sentence. The goal is to power through the whole thing, to get it done as soon as possible. When I edit these essays before publishing, then, I'm not sharing a rough draft, not really.

And this has me feeling like a hypocrite. For so long I've wanted to see the writing process at its most infant stages, where even the author doesn't know where the story or book will go, where all they are doing is putting one word after the next--collecting sand, as one metaphor goes, to build castles later. Now that I have the opportunity to provide a glimpse into that raw process to others, I've held myself back and hidden behind a curtain of pretense, putting forward edited chapters--making the excuse that I only spent a couple of hours on the editing so they're not as polished as a serialised or published book--rather than truly rough first drafts.

I've been giving in to the perfectionism, which in turn has prevented me from making progress with the project. Had I truly been sharing first drafts, there would have been dozens of essays for you to read by now.

I'm human, but I can't use that as an excuse every time I struggle with writing, because I keep piling up insecurities on my head, new fears germinating in the space left behind by old ones. A project is a promise, and this promise was about sharing a first draft, which an essay ceases to be when it is edited.

So I am not going to edit this essay, nor any of the future ones (except to add links where relevant). There will be repetitions; I'll return to themes over and over. But at least I'll be honest. At least I'll show what my roughest drafts really look like.

At least then I'd have truly kept my promise.