Essays on Life - Part 6: On Writing (and failing at it)

Essays on Life - Part 6: On Writing (and failing at it)

What is the true genesis of an idea? Are one's ideas always one's own, or are they derivatives of another's work?

The Greek schools of philosophy believed that humans were just vessels in which the unmanifested put thoughts, which then got processed as ideas. That is one of the reasons to explain the presence of angels in paintings, statues of saints, etc. It was the thoughts of these beings that humans channelled and presented as their own. Remember the famous story about the structure of benzene that August Kekul saw in his dreams?

I think writing is the physical manifestation of unmanifested thoughts. Writing binds the limitless thoughts into the constraints of language, grammar, and social norms of decency or appropriateness. Thus, the brilliance of the original thought may be lost or attenuated, to say the least.

The point is that, just like programming, writing is a function of time and acquired skills (language, grammar, punctuation, sentence construction, etc.). Application of consistent effort can help one make better chairs faster, but it may not necessarily make one a gifted carpenter. What you have described is the former; what I am struggling with is the latter. The question to answer is: What triggers the thoughts?

To give you an example, the three letters you wrote to me planted seeds in my mind, which began germinating as I pondered them while watching television, sitting in meetings listening to boring drivels, driving through insane traffic, and sometimes in the shower, which I take regularly (a detail that I could have avoided but didn't just for the dramatic effect).

So, while the seeds germinated, it built up an entire thought network that germinated only to be delivered this morning. Now, when I look back detachedly at the events of the day, there were no apparent triggers, yet I spent a good part of my day writing all this.

The question is how I was able to structure one response, amalgamating three disparate correspondences on different topics. And why is it that I can't employ the same approach in the novel I am trying to write, where only I own the story and the characters? Is it because when you have the power to do anything, you actually do nothing? That infinite power begets infinite inertia.