I am a writer. That was one of my conclusions when
I left The Guardian’s offices
recently. I had attended a masterclass by my favourite journalist/columnist,
Gary Younge. Gary turned out to be a very engaging facilitator, even if I felt
star-struck at the beginning and therefore found it difficult to concentrate.
Very few times I am reduced to the role of weepy groupie who has just met her
music idol, but that was me the first quarter of an hour. Minus the weeping.
I came away from the masterclass with a few
conclusions. The first one was that it is OK to be egocentric as a writer. In
fact, in a very subtle way, Younge encouraged his audience to go for a certain type
of healthy solipsism. In talking about his family, especially his mother, Gary rendered
our own personal stories universal. We all share a relative who is slightly
awkward, overweight, eccentric, and at the same time lovable, trustworthy and enterprising.
The second conclusion I took from the workshop was
that we writers are privileged. We get not only to experience the occasional,
unique moment in history but also to capture it and transform it into a piece
of art. An aesthetic truth can be expressed in non-fiction as well as or
sometimes better than in fiction.
The third conclusion was the raison d’être of writing. Why write? Because I exist as a human
being first and as many other mutations after. And each of these layers feels
the need to leave traces of their existence behind. That, in a sense, is the
essence of writing. To give a platform to each of these identity markers in
order to share a truth with the world. Sometimes in a fictionalised way.
Sometimes veracity-driven. Each of these layers makes up and contributes to my
writer’s output and constitution. I exist, therefore I write. Or vice versa.
I mentioned the writer’s solipsistic nature before. A
caveat, though. It may be our voice doing all the singing but we still play
with a full backing band. The combination of these two elements, the writer’s (inner)
motivation and the influence of her/his surroundings on their work, gives us a
vivid and rich tableau vivant of the
writer’s inner world and the way it interacts with the outer one. That’s the
fourth conclusion.
The fifth conclusion involves the blank page or the
act of killing it. Bump the blank off the page as soon as you can. Your draft
should materialise within minutes, because
we always have something to say (write).
Sixth and last conclusion: writing is never lineal.
Your story has a thesis. It also has an antithesis. The job is to combine both
to come up with a synthesis. Writing that takes place in an echo chamber is
not writing. It’s self-congratulatory, back-slapping, flat-lining drivel. Write
in order to challenge yourself. Only by pushing the boundaries of what we know,
as far as possible, do we start to scratch, barely scratch the surface of our
human condition.
©
2018
