I write because I have to exorcise thoughts or stories out of my head. Each story or thought I write about is the one that emphatically demands to be expressed.
If I don’t, they leave me no peace or respite. They haunt me like a movie on endless repeat I am forced to watch. Even though they are a part of me, they still demand their independent existence from me.
These thoughts and stories will push and persist until I capture them, make sense of them, then lay them to rest by putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. It’s as if once the stories or thoughts find themselves materialized on paper or screen, they find closure and leave me alone.
Until the next thought or story assails me.
I write because I feel duty-bound at times to contribute to, what my friend Karl Rafique calls, the collective national consciousness. It’s like a national ecosystem of thoughts, concepts, beliefs, ideas, and the like. So long as we express the thought publicly, instead of caging it in our chests, we would have in some minuscule way contributed to the collective national consciousness. The thought or idea is ‘in the air’, so to speak, and available for consideration, denigration or refinement by anybody.
The main tributaries to the national consciousness are domestic cultural artifacts, government policy, popular culture, domestic news, and so on. They are the main tributaries because of their breadth and depth of reach into society.
But those are not the only contributors to the national consciousness. There are also the creeks, brooks, and rivulets too. These are comprised of non-mainstream media, niche cultures, specialized forums, messenger groups, and so on including obscure fleeting blogs, like mine. We are the murmuring brook within earshot of the river roar. Hear our murmurs!
We are faint, but we are there.
I write to better see what my thoughts or stories in my head look like in reality.
It is easier to judge them when they are outside than inside my head where everything is shimmeringly perfect and complete. Once corporeal, these ideas possess weight, solidity and dimension. That creates opportunities for them to be further refashioned and refined.
Writing is a way for me to figure out what it is I am trying to say or think. Sometimes it’s to find out what I didn’t know I was thinking. It’s a way of thinking more deliberately, more literarily, more rationally.
I write to test ideas or work them out. Ideas that fly in my head often crash outside of it. Reality peddles no illusions; just the cold steel of causation and serrated edges of consequence, no matter what we think, or hope the situation to be.
I write to provide a meeting point for the open-minded and the likeminded.
It’s a flare to let others know that there are others out there like them. It is to assure them they are not alone; that there is someone who had existed or is existing whose mind reverberates the same way. Those thoughts you have, others have them too. Don’t worry, you are sane. Either that or you and I are the insane ones. But at least we have each other for company.
I write as a way to stand up and be counted for on matters I want to stand up and be counted for. But I cannot stand up for everything. Doing so saps my strength to stand up for the things I want to or need to. Knowing when not to write is just as important as knowing when to write. Others should be given the opportunity and encouragement to do so too.
Sometimes, I write because I actually enjoy it.
I enjoy watching what my mind directs my fingers to put on paper. Be it pen or keyboard, I savour the anticipation of watching the words fall into place not knowing and yet knowing what words come next. I enjoy rearranging, replacing, adding and deleting words in a sentence, sentences in a paragraph, and the paragraphs themselves. In doing so, strengthening or enervating the whole like a volume dial until they read or sound as I imagine them.
If I am lucky, the thoughts or stories are almost if not fully formed when they are materialised. It is then simply a matter of copying out the soundless words and sentences I feel in my mind.
I write to remember, to recollect, to reflect upon the life I have lived. To pin it down before it slips away unnoticed. To cherish certain moments. To revisit those things I didn’t understand at the time. To better learn from what I failed at before. To forgive certain events or people. If someone learns something or is entertained by them, so much the better.
And after committing it to paper or pixel, I have the freedom to forget it whilst reserving the ability to retrieve it if I want to albeit in fossilized form. All the nuances of the original memory will slowly fade as the one committed to form remains clear and tangible.
So sometimes I write to forget.
Because these days, there are just too many things to remember and be mindful of.
1 thought on “Why I Write, Sometimes”
Yes. Writing thots, unthots, and disthots are important. They hv a cathartic role and makes writing external and ‘out thrre!’ It creates an independent set of ideas which take a life of its own. When others comment; it adds value and other perspectives! I argue that it even takes an objective existence outside of the subjective observer! It become a third person view, outside the jurisdictional perspective of Law. Simply bcos in legal jurisdictions there are yet other ruled binding the writer!
This is indepedent of such rule-defined reality but still a Responsible Actor perspective! Does all this make sense? KJJ