I try not to be overtly meta in this blog, but I think it’s a good idea to reflect on the purpose of what one is doing every couple of years. When I read the works of people who write well, I can’t help but envy them and wonder how they do it. Writing is really a love and hate relationship for me. Sometimes when I put my hands on the keyboard, it’s as though I’ve set a flame beneath a paper with invisible ink– words just appear, fluent and natural. Other times, words tear through my flesh and rip my fingers as they come out. The rest of the time, when I have a million thoughts and fingers too reluctant to write, the words remain like a knot in my throat.
During the writing process I have the singular obsession to achieve perfection. To ensure that every word is properly placed, that every sentence serves a purpose. After all that is done comes the self-consciousness, which strangely enough has become more prominent the more experience I’ve had. I begin to question– Is this well written? Am I getting better? But perfection, as the saying goes, is a moving target. So, while on occasion a piece goes into the recycling bin, I mostly end up revising until I am satisfied. Writing for me is not always a pretty process, but it is one that I find necessary… and it’s nice to look forward to that moment when the challenge has been overcome .
A couple of days ago I was looking at the statistics for visitors to my blog in 2009… London, New York, and Chicago topped a list of 5,233 cities, the majority of which I had never heard of before… Now while I’d like to flatter myself, I’m sure not all of them stuck around, but even twenty years ago you had to be an accomplished writer in order have any number of people actually stumble upon what you wrote. In the blogs that I am subscribed to, people produce content that is timely, thoughtful, and in many ways exceptional; but many are not writers in the traditional sense. Today all you need is access to the internet and passion. While writing has its own intrinsic value, to know that out of the thousands of people that pass by, one person will actually read and enjoy what you’ve written is both humbling and stirring. It boils the desire to write more, and to write better.
I’ve had this site for five years, and over the course of the 76 entries I’ve written, it’s been a great place to share my thoughts. So while I’m never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down… I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how to orient what I write here, and give it more purpose than simply the repository for my occasional musings. I think rather than stifling my creativity, refining the ideas on the blog may put some method to the madness and pave way for even better ideas.
Speaking of creativity, I found an amazing channel on youtube which contains exceptional and creative advertisements from all over the world. This was their most recent one:
- Marzieh Ghiasi
I’ve found it quite hard to write for the past little while. Normally I find that when I don’t write for a couple of days, I get bent out of shape and it becomes harder to do so. But this has been rather a surprising development because I wrote regularly during the summer in Iran. Since returning, however, I feel uninspired despite being overwhelmed perhaps with thoughts and ideas. I’ve arrived at the conclusion that for whatever reason I am suffering from a bad case of writer’s block. After reading on the subject, I’ve decided to not force it though. It seems that, herbal remedies and all, the only reasonable antidote to this malaise is to let words and ideas find their way back into the mind naturally. While conducting my little investigation I found this interesting letter by Fyodor Dosteovsky to his brother Mikhail, discussing Dosteovsky’s experiences and toils writing. I figure if the gods themselves struggled, then there is hope for the rest of us yet.
