Where do words come from, and where do they go?
reflections on a year or two of writing practice
It’s been a year and a half since I created this substack and over two since I committed to a regular writing practice. In January 2022, I published my first post in a series on meditation. All I was going on was a sense that it would be a good thing to write more. I knew that I was relatively skilled at writing, and had something to say. But I didn’t anticipate the ways in which my commitment to writing would unfold, nor the many realizations, confirmations and shakeups I’ve had along the way because of it.
Over the course of a tumultuous year, writing became my anchor, and a light to orient around when there was nothing else. It’s also been a place to untangle the knots in my mind, to learn to express myself more coherently, and to recognize the familiar cadence of my thought patterns and the loops and spirals they send me down.
In this post I want to share a bit about how I write; I will also detail a few things that worked, what didn’t work, and include some updates on how I plan to move forward with this substack. In case you haven’t yet, please subscribe—and know that your presence and support make it possible for me to continue writing.
my (current) process
Words, to me, always feel like music. When I read, I hear a voice in my head shaping the words. (Often it’s the rhythm of an author’s language that either hooks me or completely puts me off whatever I’m reading.) Turning from a reader into a writer meant listening much more attentively to my own voice, whether I’m speaking to another or to myself inside my head.
I’m the type of writer that edits as I go, so I often read and re-read my own passages multiple times over. Writing in this way feels like having a conversation with myself, the threads of which spread out like a spiderweb of impressions through time. Sometimes in the midst of life, something will happen that touches one of those threads and makes it sing inside my head. It will keep vibrating there until I pay attention and follow that thought to its culmination, when it returns to silence and rests.
There usually comes a point when I tire of listening to the sound of my own thoughts (no matter how well I’ve tried to articulate them); that’s when I know that a post is asking to be sent out into the world, that my words want to meet the words resting in the heart and mind of an Other.
what worked
1. cherish the mystery
Words are among our most potent tools. Unlike our animal ancestors, we humans have learned to put language to our innermost, secret impulses and sensations. Often it feels like we’re fumbling around imperfectly, searching for the magical combination of sounds that will give form to what lives intangibly within us. In that seeking process, we unearth something mysterious that has the power to travel across time and space and reach someone right when and where they need it.
Words have resonance, just like music. The more I write, the more I recognize words as an expression of mystery. I never know which of my words will touch someone, prompt them to think, or strike them deeply. Sometimes the pieces that I got bored of writing receive the greatest response. Other times the sentences I was about to cut are the ones that people quote back to me as having moved them. [This makes editing as daunting as it is necessary.]
Writing regularly has also made me more receptive to the words of others. I can no longer count the number of times I’ve been sent an article or heard a conversation containing the exact combination of words that were needed to unlock something fresh inside me. It’s like life is a cosmic-scale editor, conspiring to prod me in specific directions by making sure certain ideas reach me over and over again.
2. ideas come from nowhere
We have a sign at home made of that plasticky reflective material that changes as you walk past it—do you know the type? From one angle the sign says ‘NOWHERE’; from another, it says ‘NOW HERE’. Nowhere/Now Here.
One of my biggest challenges in the last few months has been creating a life that’s empty enough to facilitate writing. I don’t only mean having the time to sit down and write, but also the internal space and openness. When life gets too full and chaotic, my thoughts are unable to properly cohere. Emptiness is the space that allows everything to bounce around and find its own place in the matrix, as well as the glue that then holds it all together, invisibly.
I often get ideas in random moments, when my mind feels safe and free enough to wander, and unencumbered enough by immediate problems to reach for something beyond the mundane. That sweet (void) spot is fleeting, and sometimes itchy to be in, because it sits close to boredom, enemy #1 of modern life. When I get restless in the waiting, I remind myself to cherish the empty moments and to let things unfold slowly. Out of nothing, something is born.
3. the process itself
Imposter syndrome is real. To overcome it, I’ve come up with a simple workaround. The trick is to turn being a writer from a noun into a verb, from what I am into what I do. What makes someone a writer? The act of writing. (And of—hopefully—being read).
There is something in this about loosening the fixation around identity and recognizing self (what I am) as an ongoing process, and a choice I’m making. I choose to become more of a writer every time I sit down and write. The same holds true for any activity we do, and even for habits we perform. What are you becoming by the way you’re living your life?
The second thing that helps me overcome imposter symdrome is to remember an instruction from my meditation teacher: the personal trumps the generic. It’s so easy to compare my writing to all the other wonderful, thought-provoking content out there. It’s also easy to try to be like the writers I admire, which is natural since learning often happens by imitation. But I’m slowly coming to understand that the main thing that distinguishes my writing from anyone else’s is that it’s me writing it. [How not to turn this into an ego thing is another question.] What is personal to me, the real and messy quality of what I’m going through—that is the fuel that goes into and the flavour that comes out of my writing. Sometimes this is easier to perceive in speech; that sincerity and genuine words strike us more deeply than well-rehearsed fanciness.
I’ve experimented on this substack with more formal, informative posts, and informal, reflective posts. It’s hard to say which have been more ‘successful’ by metrics alone; but the latter have stuck with me more. They’re the ones I remember writing, and receiving responses to, whereas the former are easier for me to lose track of. I wonder if this is also the case more broadly in life: it’s more likely we’ll forget the information we learn, rather than the experiences we have. Information seems, and can be, useful in the moment, particularly when we need to know something. But it’s not what stays with us, or transforms us, over time.
what didn’t work
I can sum this up in three words: trying too hard. This could’ve been in terms of:
setting myself arbitrary deadlines, word counts or limits
imitating someone else’s style, voice, posting schedule, prompts etc.
forcing myself to write when nothing’s coming
getting too technical about language and the nitty-gritty of which words I’m using how, when, where and why
Many of these are actually tried-and-tested writing techniques that help a lot of people. But since I’ve come to view writing as an exercise in expressing something that’s coming through me, and therefore not a process that is fully in my control, it doesn’t make sense for me to approach it this way.
I’d still, of course, like to be a ‘better writer’—more eloquent, less repetitive, snappier, more original… but maybe that could happen to me along the way, as I learn from my own experience. In the meantime, I am practising honouring the impulse to create as and when it arises, being disciplined enough behind-the-scenes to make space for it and ‘catch’ it repeatedly, and then trusting the timing and the voice that emerge from that process.
going forward
1. cyclical publishing
When I first started this substack, I tried to be as dedicated as I could to a regular publishing cadence. It started out monthly, became fortnightly and even weekly for some periods, and has now morphed into an intermittent, unpredictable rhythm. All the writing advice out there suggests following a weekly schedule so that readers know when to expect to hear from you—but this just created a lot of pressure for me to “say something, anything!”, so it’s not something I’m going to be keeping in mind any longer.
I don’t work well under pressure, and there is a clear correlation between my publishing frequency and the quality of my writing. I appreciate deeply the time that you choose to spend with my words; so I don’t want to write more frequently yet create pieces that are less complete, polished, or deep. At the same time, I do appreciate the structure that having a set publishing rhythm provides.
Going forward, I will be sticking to a self-created writing schedule (sitting down to write 3 times a week), but publishing only as and when I feel a piece is ready and done. Behind the scenes, there is a natural, cyclical timing to such publishing; each post will go through its own cycle of being created, maturing, being edited, reviewed and then released. This means you may not hear from me as regularly, or you may hear from me more frequently within a given period of time—it’s going to be unpredictable, but I hope it feels like an unexpected surprise whenever an email from me appears in your inbox.
2. inspiration
I want to end by sharing one of my current sources of inspiration in relation to writing. As much as I love to read, I now look to books and other writing less and less as a source of inspiration. Sometimes it’s just too intimidating, other times there are simply too many words in my head already.
My most recent inspiration comes from Arabic calligraphy. Since the start of this year, I’ve taught myself to read the Arabic alphabet and am now playing with writing individual letters using reed pens and ink. The beauty of Arabic is that each letter has a specific, highly-proportioned manner in which it is written. It takes a long time to master the movements that create a single letter; the unique combination of freedom and focus creates a state that is very close to meditation.
When I practice calligraphy, I feel like I’m travelling down to the atomic level of what a word is and how to create it. It’s not directly connected to the way I write an essay, but there is a link that’s slowly being revealed to me, in the way that both practices channel intangible impressions into visible forms. The other thing, of course, is how beautiful the Arabic language is. It reminds me that when I write I am trying not only to communicate a thought, but to do so in a manner that touches someone aesthetically. Beauty in this sense is not simply adornment or vanity, but a sign of the transcendence and meaning in creation.
The more I open beyond words (as I wrote about in this post), the more sources of inspiration and intelligence are revealed to me. It is a gift of being human to be able to transmute all these different forms of information—visual, sensory and kinaesthetic—into words that speak to you. Thank you to each and every one of you for reading and engaging with what I write. I’m looking forward to the start of a new cycle in relation to writing, and where the future of this substack takes me. Let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions or feedback.
Ugh. I meant NOT verbose.
I always appreciate your posts. A suggestion: your posts are dense and long, though always worthwhile, in my opinion they could be broken up so that you are posting more frequently and also to please those of us who look to social media for shorter bits of inspiration and information. Thank you for continuing to write.