A life lesson from writing
No buts about it! You were told not to begin your sentences with ‘But’. A life lesson is to forget any such rule! It doesn’t matter whether you are at the pinnacle of your career or starting out, there is always a time in your life when you feel stuck. I felt that need for the push yet I was resisting it. Excuse upon excuse piled up. I often found myself staring at a new blank document on my computer screen. Too concerned whether the finished piece of work will live up to my expectations. What did I just write? ‘Live up to my expectations?’ Not true, to begin with, there was no idea.
Lesson 1 – First sentence
How do you begin without an idea? Maybe to type that first sentence and hope for the best. I tried and threw in a few more sentences. The paragraph was not readable. It sounded very mechanical, straight out of a thesaurus word generator. The second paragraph was not great either. However, I carried on. By the beginning of the third paragraph, I felt a bit relaxed and thought there was rhythm in the text. I was not looking for any fancy words but words that would be apt for my narrative. Kept it simple. Tried not to impress anyone with the most obscure words in my vocabulary or clogged clause upon clause into my sentences. Nouns weighed down with adjectives and verbs saddled with adverbs. No. None of these.
Lesson 2 – Parallels
I have realised that life is just like writing one simple sentence after another. In writing, words are our main tool. Word selection is our choice of people that we decide to hang around with. It sounds awfully simple, isn’t it? However, most tyrannies of life are because of the poorly selected bunch of people. Another aspect of good writing is to be consistent and coherent. The same is true with life. Sometimes, halfway through your draft of life, you realise the problem and come back to your senses and focus.
Lesson 3 – Your beginnings and endings count
A good piece of writing has a strong beginning. You captivate your reader with a crackling first sentence or an intriguing first paragraph. Similarly, you summarise your piece giving a clear idea for the reader to exit. The best part of writing is that you can change it if you don’t like your beginning. In life, if you haven’t had the desired beginning, you can change your course in the middle for a better ending for your exit.
It goes on
If you want to inspire anyone with your writing, start by inspiring yourself. Likewise, life needs inspiration and it starts with ‘you’. You may want to season it sometime but keep the basics, authentic and pure. Decorative flourishes are good to look at but what keeps it all together is you. To learn to persevere through moments of doubt is writing and life. Hope you could connect with the post and give it a go-to to start out a new adventure. Just like writing, where you delete the words which are redundant, delete the distractions that are stopping you from achieving your true potential.
Much love
Suranjita
