My List of Don'ts for Writing

Writing a poem, short story, novel or anything with words is a process that is slow and tiring. There are plenty of advises I can capture from brilliant writers as well as from peers who are going through the struggle of creating in their daily life like I am. There are tutorials on YouTube that claim to help you write a short story in under one hour. 

Also there are videos about writers talking about writing as a difficult process where the first draft is often shelved for months, maybe years, until the characters or the theme gestates into a life of its own. So there are different schools of thoughts that can help me or at the end of the day confuse me as well.

However like any other form of art or learning the process that works for me derives from my own personal experience. Whether it is time tested theories that I learn from other writers or it is something that brews in me subconsciously for some time until it pops out in my conscious as a revelation or an epiphany. 

The key is that the list of lesson(s) has to be my own. I should be able to call it my own in a group of strangers and share it with them so they can begin their process if it helps them. So here is a list I've managed to scrape out from my limited experience. Mind it, it is a list of Don'ts, so any time I begin a project I try to avoid these mistakes.

1. Do not start with a title in mind. 

We all have certain inspirations that come to us and inspire us to inscribe them with words. Or sometimes we are passionate about a topic that is personal or impersonal in nature. Either time it is easier to put label on the topic. Let’s say I want to write about the effect of divorce on children. There's a pretty clear picture that forms in the mind. But I have to avoid giving it a title that immediately makes it personal to me. I have to form a relationship that is close but not too close so as to disable my senses by deluging them with known experiences. I want to remain it vague enough so I have the ability to stay flexible and play with different ideas. I know I'm being a bit vague but that's the whole point.

2. Do not try to be completely rational.

I have a tendency to keep it real in my life. That's a necessity to survive in the cutthroat environment of this world. Not to be abstract as some may say. But it has an equally adverse effect on writing. Creativity, especially writing, is about creating characters out of thin air. Of course you may say the character is inspired from my friend or sibling, but did your sibling go through the entire course of circumstances that you have tried to put in the piece of writing. You have to give yourself liberty to create circumstances and emotions that are fictitious in nature, letting them broil and mix different ingredients so as to create something that plucks at readers emotional strings, whether it is making them cry or sad or happy or tense. We all live our lives daily there isn't a need to create emulate that life in fictitious life as well. 

3. Do not stuff with your piece of creativity with too much detail.

It is tempting to create imagery that rich in details. However I believe that some gaps should be left for the reader to fill in with his or her experience. In a way gaps are where reader takes a gasp. In a form of creativity where words are used I sometimes try too hard to put in details that may create a very vivid imagery for the reader but it also leads to tiresome details that flood the reader. Reader might feel tired and form an opinion very early on about the place or character in your poem/story. But you want to leave room for reader to have this subconscious discussion with himself on which side of the spectrum he wants this character to be placed.

4. Do not be afraid of failure.

It is a tough task to be creative. It is something that doesn't come naturally to me. I have to play around with things, discover new things and then let them play inside my mind by themselves. And out of all this exercise comes something that interests me. And majority of times my perspective on the piece is something that's my own and the readers might form a completely different image. It may or may not be bad but that's their view. It is within my right to be either disappointed that reader didn't even come to a realization of my view but that's creativity. Anything we read is splashed with colors from our own conscious and subconscious mind. And as long as I can create I am happy. If it is read by thousands or just me, that's for time and destiny. But my job was to create and I've done my job.

Thanks for reading in case you stumbled upon this piece.