writing better

Most of the time when I sit down to write I have a vague idea of what it is that I want to write about. Most of the time, the urge to write comes from something I saw, experienced or read. I have formed an opinion and feel the need to share it. With some thought fragments in my mind, I sit down, fire up the fox, and type away.

Normally the first paragraph rolls out smoothly, as did the one that started this post. Then, in the second paragraph, the troubles start. I hesitate, undecided on how to proceed, and write, edit and erase sentences in fits and starts. Over the course of the next half hour or so, the second paragraph slowly take shape and by doing so defines the shape of the post. Either of two things can happen.

Most of the time I mentally flog my brain through frustrating moments of cerebral paralysis, punching it with the fists of my imagination and driving it to think in the direction I had initially set out on. Usually, this works but the result is not always pretty and always takes hours longer than I had planned. Before I start, the thoughts always seem to be ready in my brain, just waiting to be put to paper. In reality, what exists is a mashup of stimuli, opinions and intellectual fragments that make sense only in the nonlinear environment of my own brain. As soon as they come to light, the extent of their incoherence becomes painfully obvious. They resist all but the fiercest attempts at structurization.

Sometimes and not too rarely, something amazing happens. My subconscious takes over and starts guiding my typing fingers. Some internal linearity of my thoughts manifests itself, and a perfectly rational argument or coherent story starts to emerge. This takes no time at all but my breath away. At the end, I read the result with eager surprise because it's as unexpected to me as it will be to any reader of the blog. And it has only a most peripheral connection with my initial thoughts.

For a blog this is good. Fewer thoughts about structure and organization mean a more intense and immediate presentation. And it's easy to wing it over the course of a few hundred words. However, the approach shows its limits when something longer, something more serious is the goal of the writing process.

Over the last few months, ever since returning from the Middle East in October, I've been trying to put words together to fragrantly describe the experiences and encounters I had in Syria. This will be more than a diary; I want to make my essay enjoyable by the wider public. The goal is to have it published in a newspaper or magazine. I want to paint a vivid picture of the country as only I saw it, distilling the essentials of two weeks into a few pages. Space and time have to be rearranged to make for convincing reading, all the while factual truth must reign supreme.

I haven't got very far. I've long gone beyond two thousand words but they exist in several disconnected heaps, none of which is logically and dramatically sound; and in two languages. They read like a writing exercise gone wrong. Despite the topical focus, there is no thematic consistency and no narrative drive. Some structure is clearly needed, a framework for presenting illustrative episodes intertwined with background information.

Last night, out of nowhere, the strings of letters in front of me started to turn into something like a travelogue. The heaps of words are still not connected, but they're beginning to blend into each other. Order is starting to emerge. It will take a bit more work and certainly much more time to transform the accumulated verbosity into a convincing story, but for the first time since writing the first paragraph, I'm not mired in bleak despair.

It's a good time to proceed to the next step of writing, graduating beyond the most basic accumulation of words. On Saturday, I'll be at the LSE Literary Festival, attending a few talks and panel discussions that I signed up for without much thought or expectation. I will also participate in a workshop on how to write a political novel that I'm very much looking forward to. Not that I want to write a novel, political or not. I have the hardest time to turn a few paragraphs into a consistent story and would mentally drown in anything vaster. But whatever tricks there are to get a novel done efficiently, clearly and convincingly, they'll surely be useful for my humble efforts.