I am a bibliophile. I buy and collect books with every intention to devour through all of them. This is when I wish I had photographic memory like Mike Ross the character from the television law drama “ Suits” so that I could have one glance and grasp it all. But then these are writings which are different from datas, legal texts and authorities. The writings that I enjoy reading are works of fiction or writings that come from the heart of their authors. We need to savour and feel them.
I read fictions, whether they are
heavy, dark or light hearted and I also read some non-fictions about humanity and how our brains and psyche
work. I may not understand completely the findings and theories in some of
these non-fictions written by
intellectuals and scientists but I do find myself learning a little bit more
about humanity as I read them. It takes me a much longer time to read these non-fictions as
compared to reading novels. I enjoy fictions because I love words and the beauty
of how some prose and sentences are strung together. Even though the themes I am interested
in centre around life events, there is an abundant supply of fascinating
stories that are created by the writers all over the world. I am constantly
amazed by how insightful all of these writers are about the realities of life
and how clever they are to weave a story and that intrigue around all these words. Sometimes I read to
escape from the dryness of my work, sometimes I read to find solace and
resolution like what Nina Sankovitch, a lawyer turned housewife did when she
started her reading project and wrote her reading memoir : Tolstoy and the Purple Chair My
Year of Magical Reading . But mostly I read because I find great
pleasure in reading. Nina Sankovitch was committed to reading a book a day
after her sister died of cancer as she was seeking reprieve from her pain
and possible answers for her loss . Like what Ms Sankovitch wrote, “But all the books I read, the hard
ones to work through and the easy ones to devour, were doing me good, lots of
good. And bringing me pleasure, lots of pleasure.”
The Elephant House , Edinburgh
|
Very often I cannot wait to
finish reading one book which I had started so as to get on to another. To me
many books look like promising reads. The problem is you cannot gobble down
words just like you cannot chomp down food no matter how hungry you are. You
need to digest what you read just like you need to digest the food you consume.
Sometimes when you are so engrossed with the story, it is an anti- climax when
it ends and you feel a sense of loss when you come to the end of the book.
There are fictions that are intense and I completely immerse myself with the
protagonist and the characters and then when the story ends, I feel a little
sad that I have to leave these characters behind.
When that happens, I feel like I need to decompress and take a little breather while
my head is still swinging with the stories of these characters.
I get particularly excited whenever I come across a passage
that resonates with my thoughts. I am naturally drawn to writings that I like
so that can happen quite often. I also enjoy writing. I write opinions and advice for my legal work but that is not the kind of
writing I like writing. I can only write in spurts the kind of writing I dabble
in. Although I do not write the kind of writing I like for a living , I find
the following passage from the memoir by Haruki Murakami as translated in
English by Philip Gabriel in “ What I talk about when I talk about Running”
aptly describes how I feel about writing.
“ As
I suspect is true of many who write for a living, as I write I think about all
sorts of things. I don’t necessarily write down what I’m thinking; it’s just
that as I write I think about things. As I write, I arrange my thoughts. And
rewriting and revising takes my thinking down even deeper paths. No matter how
much I write, though, I never reach a conclusion. And no matter how much I
rewrite, I never reach the destination.”
Haruki
further writes, “ Even after decades of writing, the same still holds true. All
I do is present a few hypotheses or paraphrase the issue. Or find an analogy
between the structure of the problem and something else.”
When one writes, one is in touch with his or hers thoughts and we think about things. When we express our thoughts in written form, we are putting down in print our stance and our beliefs if we are truthful. Writing needs concentration. It is also a creative process where one can be transported through one’s imagination when one writes. But thoughts come and go, so often I come across an idea or a concept which I think comical or insightful; I might have thought it was a brilliant idea to write about later and when I tried to recall it later somehow I could no longer feel its magic or humour. I also do not have a good memory so I can no longer recall the exact words or phrase I probably used to formulate the idea. There were times when I had scribbled my thoughts down somewhere and subsequently when I took a look at what I had written, they no longer worked as well as I had thought they would. It was probably just a particular state of mind at that particular moment when the idea seemed to matter.
Writing is a form of play to me;
as I write I think about how to construct a sentence to describe a thought, an
emotion, a scene or an event.
I attended my first writing
workshop in October. It was really embarrassing that I had attended a writing
workshop without any writing pad. What kind of aspiring writer are you when you do not
carry a note pad ? The problem with me is that I can be planning ahead and
somehow miss out the important detail so there I was, turning up at the
workshop without any writing sheets. In
the past whenever I scribble a thought that came to mind, I tend to
discard it whenever I sit down with a view to type them out. I had even tried recording when I drove
but when I played it they sounded hollow. So these days, I carry my laptop
everywhere with me just in case I can find some time to sit down and write. The
workshop was an eye opener for me so now I carry notepads around as it does make sense to carry a notepad
to jot down interesting words that I might come across when I read.
Inspirations is everywhere if one pays attention to one’s surroundings. What I
have learnt from the workshop and talks about writing is that you
must write everyday so rain or shine, you have to sit down and write in order
to hone your writing skills. Writing and reading are solitary activities and
you simply need to set aside the time and space to get down to it everyday.
Writing is meditative and you
need to be calm to possess a clarity of mind. I find that if I am pre-occupied or feel troubled, I will not be able to write.
But then again what did I learn from the writing workshop? You must sit down
and write everyday even if you are not feeling particularly insightful about
anything on that day. Yes troubles and problems can wait, but not reading nor
writing. Be inspired everyday and everywhere.