“You can build a prison of stone and steel, but you merely present the prisoner with a challenge. Any truly determined man will find a way out. But love, love is a perfect prison”, Wilson Fisk.
Inescapable!
As the heart is held hostage by love, so is my mind by creativity. The yearning to create, the itch, the desperation – desperation can be an ally. I write, not only because I love to, but the need pushes even harder; I have to!
Before I dive deep into today’s main topic, here is something I noticed when preparing a draft on paper for this post. I dislike pens, ball-points, gel, fountain pens, whatever writes in ink. Journaling, when I do, is in pencil. From cover to cover, writings in pencil, sketches, design wire-frames, quotes, random thoughts, nonsense, I don’t discriminate, all in pencil, all on plain-sheet notebooks.
Alas! The restrictions are gone, freedom beyond lines and ink.
My writing may not be as legible or pretty to look at as that written by say a Bic on a single rule sheet, heck it barely befits the description, “handwriting”. But the gold here is the ideas hidden in the mush put down by my pencil. Sometimes, I can’t, for the life of me figure out what I wrote while I’m trying to read, but that beats writing beautifully and letting ideas disappear as I try to perfect my penmanship. The freedom of pencil on plain sheets of papers/books, as trivial as it might seem, does wonders to my workflow and I can’t recommend it enough.
Now back to the subject matter; I write for many reasons, some of which I’ll share here.
To begin with, I only write short-form material, stuff like articles, blog posts, tutorials here and there and documentation for my development projects.
Books? Na-ah, I don’t think I would fancy that. The thought of it alone – no thank you! I prefer the shorter bursts of ideas, kinda instant feedback, then on to the next thing.
Short-form materials have been the core building blocks of my development journey and I owe lots of credit to them for this passion. There are too many authors and sites to mention, but the pieces from DHH and Jason Fried on Hey World have been key players in my love for the art. Their conciseness, straight to the point approach and the personalisation they put into every piece they write is a fresh of breath air.
Another factor that pushes me to write is the excitement I get when I have really interesting newfound knowledge. It might not be in the slightest bit interesting to you, but I’ll ramble about it anyways, my friends go through it, sorry 😁.
Writing about it and sharing it, grounds me a bit more in that respect, knowing that someone else out there will be thrilled to bits when they encounter that bit of information, just as I was.
The reason I haven’t been so fond of lecture, listen and leave type classes is the lack of passion in the information delivery. I meet it once in a while and I just want such lectures to go on and on; It might not even be a subject that I’m deeply interested in but that sparkle in the speaker’s eyes and the depth of their words as they share their knowledge is profound. Written pieces stir up the same emotion when the writer cares deeply about what they’re delivering.
Let me be biased but honest here for a second. My father’s Swahili classes, back when he taught the language, and my mother’s performing-arts training sessions in school are exactly the kind of experiences that would be best described with phrases such as full of depth and passionate. Without a doubt, they’re a major influence on my love for art.
That was a prelude to the point that another reason I write is to share knowledge with depth. Putting in that extra effort to ensure that it is clear and concise so everyone gets the point. If you’re passionate about it, the passion and care will be evident in the information you share; At least I hope that’s the case for my pieces. Is it?
I think as a gift for sharing knowledge, there’s a peace that I am rewarded with. Two to three lines into writing a piece and my thoughts are flowing, smoothly, peacefully. I isolate the sound of my fingers hitting the keys on my keyboard and just like that, I’m gone. Some sort of trance, peaceful, tense in a good way and productive of course – a good piece at the end.
There has to be a selfish reason too, right? There always is [grinning].
During a week as hectic as this one, I find relief and rest in writing. I type my thoughts on things I care about and my computer listens, keen to register every key-press, then it displays its response on the screen. I add more and more lines, and it keeps listening, it keeps responding and here you are, reading the result.
“This man sounds nuts”, we all are! Most of us just don’t write about it 😄.
So I write for lots of reasons, some personal and selfish, some relatable and helpful to others. The baseline being that I love doing it; Not enough to sell a limb for it, but just enough to keep writing, enjoying every bit of it.
Even knowing that sometimes I’m just rambling on and on, circling the same idea, I don’t decide when to stop, where it ends, it just does!
This is a cross-post from the original in my blog site