An insight into the writing process

 

From I Lourdesamy

How much of your writing is yours? This seems a strange question to ask. Obviously, what you write must be yours. But is it?

Anyone who has done any writing – whether prose, verse or technical – will know that often the finished product is not quite what you had intended it to be. There seems to be a 

third force

 that has shaped the final piece, both in content and form.

This hidden hand is always at work, sometimes collaborating with you and sometimes leading you in directions you had not conceived when you started writing. Sometimes the hidden hand takes over the writing process and you end up with a product that appears unfamiliar to you.

Fortunately, often the final product is better than what you had schemed and planned when you started the writing process.

The writing seems to have a life of its own, directing and guiding your hands and thoughts through an uncharted labyrinth that you had not intended to enter. You might have triggered this messy process in the concepts in your early paragraphs but later the hidden hand had taken over.

Writing is not linear or orderly, following a predetermined plan. Instead, it is messy, going back and forth with ideas and concepts thrown around, rearranged, and even abandoned. The end result is the by-product of a muddled process, not the outcome of any rational thinking from beginning to end.

The writing process takes this form because the mind is not linear and rational in its thinking. It works like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. The picture keeps changing as the pieces fall in the correct places. The pieces that follow depend on the pieces you have already arranged.

You begin with an idea in your mind. As you write, it triggers the mind in a myriad of ways. New pieces appear. New arrangements become visible. The conscious and subconscious minds are the key factors in this process of creativity. Of course, this generative process will only happen if the mind is not 

empty

 but is fertile with data, information, experiences and memories.

The writer plants a seed (idea). It will only grow if there is a rich mind. This is where education, learning, experience and memories come in to build a fertile mind. More importantly, practice counts. You need to write to learn writing.

This messy process of writing is often mistaken to be a rational process – one that can be 

modelled

 and 

taught

. At best, it can only be described as a 

science of muddling through

.

The best writers became best through writing and learning the art and science of how the mind is the third force in this creative process. Although every person works best at different times, there is evidence that the mind is most creative in the early mornings between 3am and 5.30am. I have experienced this myself.

There were several occasions when I was 

disturbed

 in the early mornings when I experienced a rush of ideas on a problem that I had been preoccupied with. On one occasion, the ideas persistently flowed. I was afraid I would not remember them in the morning.

So, I got up and went to my study to write down these thoughts. When I returned to my bed, the ideas started flowing again. I got up and wrote them down. This happened a third time. It took some discipline on my part to get up three times to jot down the thoughts.

In the morning, I looked at what I had written down. In the notes I found a new solution to the problem I had been working on. Maybe my subconscious mind had also been working on the problem and was now providing the answers.

These are 

eureka

 moments in creative problem solving, underscoring the limitations of rational thinking and planning. On those occasions when I had the 

eureka

 experiences, I wish I had a gadget to record the thought processes in my mind and not write them down. Writing them down did not capture the full intensity of the mind at that moment.

Good writing will always remain a marriage between the writer and his mind. ChatGPT can only aspire to be a poor second. In the final analysis, writing can be learned, not taught. - FMT

I Lourdesamy is a former deputy chief education officer of Penang and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.