Becoming a Writer begins with Becoming an Observer

Becoming a writer begins with becoming an observer. One who looks closely to the things happening around us and can express it, in a much wider, deeper and brighter way. Wider in the sense that a writer is someone, seen in the society, as someone who can express things that most people cannot in words. Who are writers? We are wordsmiths, and we know how to cultivate the right emotions through our words. Deeper and more profound in the sense… that writers do not just look at something and write that. Our muse almost resides in looking underneath the things that are happening in society. This is why, when I had written in my book, Kaliyuga on My Curls:

“Destroyed buildings do not terrify me,
What terrifies me is the lost identity”

My observation was attached to the bombings in Ukraine by Russia that had destroyed a school. The bomb did not just destroy the school, but it killed the memories, the stories, the legacy of the particular building.

Brighter in the way, that when Jane Austen wrote it in her book:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”

She was subverting the age-old idea that it is young women who are looking for economically stable men. Rather, her point of view was much keener and closer to how men with money need a wife who can deliver them a life out of it.

The process of becoming a writer does not begin with having the widest range of vocabulary or the most prestigious degree. Becoming a writer begins with becoming an observer, an expresser and someone who can present the untold. It is a misconception that writers ‘think and write’.

Yes, we do. We do think. But thinking is not the sole part of writing. Thinking is an analytical process. You cannot just think of something and write a 200-page bestseller out of it. You cannot just think of a plot and write a movie out of it. To write a bestseller, you have to observe what is happening around. To become a great writer, one has to become a good observer. Someone who is capable of reading between the lines of society and observing the good and bad happenings that are entwined within. To write a good movie, you have to imagine the characters that would lead your plot to the final conclusion. And imagination is not an Ariel act. Imagination is how fragmented observations that would compile together to give shape to something more prominent. You can take it as if imagination is the brick behind the house of a wordsmith. It is filled with the sand of observation all around. Minute observations, dirty observations, rough observations, cool observations. 

Observation. 

You may not know a language and be a good writer by knowing how to express something in your native tongue. But without observation you would end up writing the same base thing everybody knows, everybody has heard.

Your observation and your approach to society is the uniqueness that sets you apart from other artists and other writers. 

Becoming a writer begins with nurturing your observations of the world.