Mastering the art of writing

If there is one thing in this world, I wish I could do better (alright there are tons of things), it would be writing and to go with it, speaking (I know, that is a lot of wishful thinking).

And since I am lazy enough to not even consider, joining a creative writing class, this is an uphill task. Made all the more difficult by the fact that I have never been studious and owe whatever little English I can speak, to the English channels on cable tv, which were a new thing in the late 90s in India, when I was growing up as a teenager.

While my English (or for that matter Hindi) workbooks used to be full of red underlines, the idiot box did manage to teach me English, which was worthy enough of employment in a leading call center. And while their accent trainers tried their best to make me understandable to Americans on the other side of the globe, I was just glad that I needn’t do much writing and no one was paying much attention to spellings! 😀

Of course, things got worse when I decided to make a career as a blogger and entrepreneur; after all, blogging was and still is, mostly about writing!

While I struggled to form a proper flow, Microsoft Word became my trusted companion and editor. From emails to blog posts and even short replies in forums, there was never a line, which I didn’t first type in Word, checked for spelling mistakes and then double checked for good measure!

Of course the hardest thing was and still is, writing sentences which at least make some sense and do not appear merely as a collection of words, but as a well thought out plan, which manages to engage the reader and conveys my point.

While I was able to accomplish this to some extent, when I was writing about something I am passionate about; things came to a complete standstill, when I tried to force myself into writing something, which wasn’t as close to my heart.

Eventually, I learned to simply give up the urges to write about matters, which did not get my emotions flowing, after all, there is only so much effort, a lazy man like me can make.

However, when you rely on emotions to provide you with the thought flow, content and tone; things can often sound more sentimental and aggressive than one had hoped for. In fact in moments such as these, I often struggled to find an appropriate tone and fail miserably.

Due to this, not only do I sound overly aggressive in some of the online discussions I participate (ok that is an understatement); but also more sentimental than I originally intended!

So while I search within myself for an answer, you must be left wondering, what was the actual purpose, teaching and aim of this rather abstract blog post and I am happy to announce, there was none!

This is just another random meandering, I felt I needed to pen down (ok type in Word and double check for spelling mistakes) and share it with whoever was unfortunate enough to stumble across it.