Writing to refine my ideas and discover new ones
This is taken from my journal.
I write to understand my ideas better. It is the verbal equivalent of drawing a chart to visualise some data. Ideas that stay in my head remain disjointed until they wither away. When I set out to express something, I do it with the intent of testing its viability.
The very process of writing is creative because of the feelings it engenders. Whether some concept feels right or wrong ultimately does not matter, as both inspire further thinking. The former begets coherent sequences of thoughts, while the latter calls for a review. We can think of those as modes of being that are necessary at different stages. There is fermentation, when things are propagating and bubbling up, and distillation, when the excess parts must be removed and what remains shall be reduced to its essentials. It is not about having one or the other, but understanding the flow wherein one becomes the other.
For me, what works best is to think about something for a while before committing it to a file. There are thoughts that register once but do not stick around. I have learnt not to capture everything as soon as it enters the periphery of my conscience, but instead to allow it to prove its potential worth by exhibiting the quality of persistence. If some idea lingers around, then I act on it. As such, I do not collect ephemeral wishes or poorly considered projects. Very little among the totality of what goes through my head survives.
I find that keeping things with no obvious value around is cognitively burdensome. When I plan my agenda, I only record the genuinely time-sensitive tasks. Those are the meetings I have to attend and any real deadlines I must meet. Everything else is an entry to my wishlist. I keep the wishlist under control. If some task is there for years, then I am most likely never going to do it. More so if I completely forgot what I was even thinking about it and its connection to the wider corpus of my work. In practice, I have learnt to anticipate such eventualities, so I will not even capture the original task. Thus I prevent bad projects from crowding out the good ones.
The point is that I blithely remove stuff. I will even delete journal entries that I diligently wrote but no longer consider useful. Most of those that are worth paying attention to end up on my website where I will likely never read them again. The only reason I publish them is because I imagine someone out there may have a use for them. It is like carefully placing an unneeded yet perfectly functional piece of furniture on the side of the road instead of destroying it. There is a neighbour who can benefit from that item.
The publications on my website are for others. I have no need for them. What I gained from the process of piecing them together is engraved in my brain as the cerebral equivalent of a beaten path. I traversed those trails, found the most efficient connections, and cleared all the intermediate obstacles. The integration of ideas that have been fleshed out is akin to connecting a road to the network. In this regard, I benefit from the fact that most of what I deal with is not sensitive to detail. I only need a small datum to derive the whole.
Decluttering my head helps me stay nimble and preserve mental space for the formation of novel thoughts and the refinement of existing ones. I do not feel attached to my works. Likening them to children (“my brainchild”) is not a helpful metaphor as I am not emotionally invested in their wellness. I treat my publications as fellow travellers I met at the port and with whom I shall part ways amicably.
In a manner of speaking, I travel with nothing but a suitcase. It contains some clothes and the irreducible tools of my craft (well, this is actually how I always travelled as I literally do not keep mementos or any extra stuff). The rest is generated on the spot. Consistent with this lightness is the manner in which I discover derivative thoughts, given a certain impetus. I have a basic concept in mind and start working on it without knowing exactly what I will produce. For example, the idea for this very essay existed long ago as a series of connected dots formed through prior explorations. Now I am drawing finer lines in the space they delineate without knowing exactly what kind of image those will reveal. My focus right now is on the micro level. This idea proceeds from the previous one and triggers the next one. Once I am done writing, I will take a step back and appreciate the macro view. The outline emerges from the body of text, not the other way around. The snapshot of this bigger picture will be imprinted in my head and I will move on to the next project.
I am not in it for the end result. The process of discovery is what drives me. I embark with my boat on the high seas not knowing which shore I will end up on, trusting that Atlas, this titanic mountain range, will continue to uphold my open horizons. I create “alla prima”, a concept I borrow from the history of art where painters choose to apply oil paint on canvas and refine it only while the paint is wet. No further refinement is done on top of dry paint. The result is one that at some level surprises even its creator. This means that I do my work in one go or, put differently, in a condensed state of flow while all the connections are fresh in my mind. I do not dwell on an essay for several days. If I cannot produce it outright, then the fermentation in my head is not completed. I have to wait for longer and only then proceed to distil what has taken form.
The Greek artists used to begin with an appeal to the Muses, the patrons of the arts, letters, and sciences: for them to whisper words that may then be expressed through the media of human communication. This is a helpful metaphor for what inspiration entails. When I am elaborating on something without a complete view of its end state I am in effect transcribing the message of the goddess as it reaches my ears. This way, I admit that “my works” are a reconfiguration and amplification of the stimuli I have been exposed to filtered through the mechanisms inherent to me, which themselves were and are conditioned by the factors specific to their case. To claim ownership over a given thing is to imply that the environment which made it possible is mine too and so on for its environment.
Muses being the authors is the other side of the aforementioned lightness. These are not my brainchildren. I am no more partial to them than to anything I have ever echoed or mimicked. The enjoyment I get out of creativity is all about having presence in my present. I work with what I have and express it without fear of being judged.
Writers hit a block when their conscience is pulled in multiple directions. In effect, they are not mentally at the locus they occupy. These distractions come in the form of competing thoughts that struggle to come to the surface all at once. They are the product of overexposure to stimuli, of rising the temperature too much which accelerates fermentation past the point of viability. They may also arise as concerns about eventualities and potential outcomes, such as the worry of being trolled for something to be published. There has been no publication and no resulting trolling reaction, yet the very notion of it hogs the stage at present time, leaving no room for pertinent thoughts to be expressed.
What others think is not relevant to the publication I am making. Their comments come ex post facto: the work is already done and I have moved on to the next one. I am thus not bothered by the past. If something I wrote is wrong, then all I can do is hope that my future self will have a more refined hearing capacity to better interpret what the Muses are disseminating. I cannot go back and undo what has transpired. I must take it as-is. Worrying about it is a waste of my finite vitality.
With regard to potentially negative comments, I am not disturbed by them. Once we abstract away from their particularities, what they do performs a vital function of reminding one not to cling on to their thoughts. If some comment bothers you, then it tells you a vital truth that you keep avoiding: you are standing on precarious ground. The reason for such weakness comes down to an asymmetry of power where you have grown attached to something, wishing it to be an extension of your self, even though you have no such power over it. Sensitivity then is the flip-side of your powerlessness to integrate with it. You need somebody to remind you that what you are doing is accumulate burdens on your conscience; burdens that may only bog you down.
Besides, the vast majority of comments are not substantive. If what you publish is superficial, then you will receive more reactions, ceteris paribus, due to the low barrier to entry. A 1-minute video will gain more full views than a 2-hour video. It takes less of a commitment to watch the former than the latter. Similarly, a mainstream topic will attract more attention than a niche one. If the material demands a higher level of concentration, which happens when you elaborate at length and specialise, you are effectively ruling out opportunistic commentary. Or, if you do still receive something generic, you know it is not worth your time.
If, then, there are comments despite the high barrier to entry, you can expect them to be fruitful, even when they are negative. The commentator is putting in the effort to make sense of your labour and is giving you something in return. Do not dread such a scenario. Learn to let go of what needs to be left behind and to pursue what continues to elude you.
Consistent creativity is necessarily underpinned by mental fortitude. I am untouchable because an attack on my works can only target a position I no longer hold. What may be visible there is but a trace of where I once was. My strength consists in not identifying with any of those mirages found in my corpus of work. I carry nothing surplus to requirements. With no burdens to slow me down, I am ever in motion even when things get rough. I experience no writer’s block as my momentum powers through any barrier.
At its core, this is an emotional disposition of remaining committed to the journey while standing aloof from its destinations. I know that I can set out to sail the seas, but I cannot control where the vicissitudes of this world’s phenomena will take me. I am subject to them and take whatever comes my way. If I wanted a specific outcome and I was ultimately disappointed it did not happen, I am reminded about the error of my ways. Why would I even believe that the world would bend to my will when I am fully aware that I have no power over it? We set ourselves up for failure when we hinge our hopes and self-worth on a specific outcome.
Fundamentally, I do what my condition renders inescapable. I have accepted what is and do not suffer from what cannot become. As I am creating this, I feel compelled to also record feelings in the following poem, titled “Mermaid” (I will also publish it separately in the Poems section of my website.
Mermaid
It is Alexander's sister
who emerges from the seabed
to warn wanton sailors
that exotic landscapes
shall not free them
from the ocean's spell