Why do we have to write?
I simply answer “because we need”. Whatever your job is, whatever your talent is, whatever your hobbies are, you need to express your idea; clear, systematical and strong. You need to write.
In my opinion, writing is a sort of thinking. It is the way for you to exercise in order to have better opinion. Writing is not easy if you just only try it once or twice and after that you wish for a miracle comes and perfect your writing. It is also not as difficult as you thought if you know how to do it, however. Just as the other skills that need determination in the beginning and perseverance to the end, so does writing.
However, in the reality, writing seems difficult because some people did not generally have enough or appropriate lesson of this skill in the schools as needed. And when they realize about the importance of writing, they could become an impatient person. Other people start it passionately but with not much preparation, and after a while they get the feeling of pessimism and lack of talent. But remember, writing needs consistence, perseverance, and passion to survive.
I think, almost everything can be written. But whether or not the person wants and has courage to write is all that matters. If the lack of idea becomes the reason of not being able to write, to me that is just a silly reason. In actual fact, our heads have thousands and even millions of ideas waiting to be written.
If someone asks me to write something, I will start with the strongest feeling that I have in that moment, once more, the strongest feeling. For example:
“Today I’m having the writer’s block. Maybe there are some reasons that block the ideas in my mind to appear yet… and so on… and so on…”
After that I will correlate something that I am writing with the theme.
Maybe for some people this technique sounds funny and cannot be realized. For example, if your strongest feeling at that time is hunger but the theme is about independence, so what is relationship between hungers and independence? Nothing.
But that is the way how the brain works; to relate one to another. This is the theory brought by A.S. Laksana in his book Creative Writing. He wrote that you can push your idea out by taking three words randomly and then you put them in a paragraph or more.
In writing, it is usual if you find the first draft you write is very messy. The text becomes broken text. It might not become an enjoyable text or it sometimes does not focus. But for me, it is no problem. For a starter, it is better than nothing. Even one of the famous writers once said that 80 present of his first draft is shit.
And to finish writing, we need to write fast. Why do we need to write fast? It is because it can keep our mood, writing mood. For me, fast writing can save my mood. It also can produce a humble and honest writing. Fast writing, to me, is the same as fast speaking. If the others can understand to what we are talking then they will understand to what we are writing as well. And to make writing as understandable as speaking, we need to write fast.
Why can we speak fast? It is because we know something that we want to tell and how to tell it. We also can speak fast because we don’t need to think hard to find the ‘magic’ words. We just speak to express our ideas clearly. It also happens in fast writing.
And the last but not least, write without editing! Yes, don’t combine these two different things; writing and editing. Separate them. So write fast and badly just like you speak! Don’t mind about errors and thee perfect ending because there is still one more step to make it better; editing.
Finally, writing needs a clear minds, determination, and perseverance.
