When less is more than enough: My biggest weakness as a writer.
I have been writing for as long as I remember my childhood. I have always been, and am still an introvert. While my ability to have strong and fruitful conversations has improved in recent years, on account on myself taking up more opportunities to grow my character, I still cannot be the one to initiate and take up long conversations. There are some people I know who have a natural knack of maintaining a conversation and taking it to places that I would not have expected. I just cannot do that. I prefer to go with the flow, and maybe try and avoid confrontation where possible. Sure, it is not the most proactive approach, but it has it’s benefits at times.
The point I want to make is this part of my personality has helped me express myself through my writing. I have won prizes at school as well as college for what I have written, but more than that, it gave me a way of venting out my frustration and excess energy into something that helps me shape my views on issues that affect me. Apparently, writing out things does help you process your emotions and calm you down.
If it were not for my dad, who helped me with my grammar as a child, I would not be able to write proficiently and prolifically. So that definitely has helped me reach where I am today. The thing with being proficient in English communication is that: having it will not boost your chances of advancing your career, but a lack of it will hamper your prospects badly. Even then, it is always nice to shape it and not lose touch of what you have gained over the years.
When I write something, be it an article or story or poem (you name it!), I like to just directly write what comes to my mind right into the paper/ document. When on song, I feel like my mind is like a bullet train: I cannot really stop it as it just rushes past, as it flows through my veins and controls the movement of my fingers as it puts pen on paper (or keyboard on monitor??) and brings out what I know and what I feel.
But the biggest problem for me is the lack of coherency of the finished article once my mad train dash is over. I have a mess on my hands. There is a good point here, a good point there. But there is no real flow between paragraphs. There seems to be no structure or conclusion. Anyone who reads it would think, what should I take away from this? And quite often for me, my writings don’t offer that.
It is because I want to tell so much, with so little of your time or attention span. I have so many things I want to share in one go. I want to fit as much I can within that one article or story. But that is where I am probably wrong. Try as you may, the best approach is always to have a proper narrative, a story to tell, and choose just what is needed to complete that narrative. And of course, an ending which offers closure and gives someone something to think about.
When you think about it, this is also a problem we face in life. We are tempted to do so much, learn so many things, experience various lifestyles and explore many places. But we just don’t have that time. So we try many things half-heartedly and inevitably end up disappointed when it all doesn’t come off. But I understand many people’s frustrations at being labelled on the basis of a single characteristic and wish to grow out of it by showing multiple talents and capabilities. I cannot provide any advice on this, but can only say that balancing things out is important and most importantly do more of what you love, rather than do what others expect of you.
Well as I try and conclude this, I just realized that rambling is another of my problems. My title promised to talk about my weakness but I ended up going on a tangent and talking about something else altogether…ah well!
