How do I write
I’ve been asked how I get the time to blog fairly regularly.
And I have an answer that does not make sense (at least, pre- and post-pandemic).
Traffic.
And by traffic I don’t mean the social media traffic of readers that beat their way to my blog. I mean genuine, horrendous, crawly, mind-numbing road traffic! Okay, may not be mind-numbing but definitely the clutch-brake-move-an-inch-forward kind.
No I don’t write while driving…
Now you’ll wonder if I write while I drive. No, I don’t. I write on my desk now mostly at home. But I think more than I write. Often a post arranges itself in my head before it forms itself into characters on the screen.
The traffic helps
Some amount of traffic helps. More traffic helps to an even greater degree! Essentially the ‘traffic’, instead of a hindrance becomes a help. In my head, words are fighting to get into their places pretty much like kindergarten children running amok in a play school. It’s only when I sit down in front of my keyboard that they sullenly fall into line, hands on the shoulders of the toddler in front of them taking tiny little steps to go back inside.
Once that is done, it’s a few revisions: few arrangements of the line-up – sending one errant child to the back of the queue, bringing another one forward and gently asking a third one to stand aside and await his turn for the next time.
Kill your darlings!
Next, I read re-read, correct the typos.
Kill your darlings, said Ernest Hemingway. Stephen King echoed him. And I try to follow their directions. (Hope reigns eternal and all that!) So, that’s what happens next. There’s so much fluff. It gets trimmed and pruned and shaped and trimmed again as I do ‘kill’ those darlings. And as words fall into their respective graves, I bring into being a (hopefully) clear, succinct post or piece that makes sense.
How long does it take?
Some take long. Like an article. Or a travelogue. A haiku gets formed and posted quickly! Of course, I blog on varied subjects and platforms – random thoughts, short stories, on writing itself, haikus, reviews, poems and so on. A short story invariably takes longer because I write so much more than necessary – then I ruthlessly edit.
But the way I write all of this is the same – first in the head. Then on paper. Or on the screen.
And then edit, edit, edit.
Till it becomes something that’s more permanent than my thoughts in the traffic!
What about you? Tell me…
How do you write?
THE CRUCIBLE
Want to have an inside look at the writing process and adopt it as your own? Join me for 4 weekends in August-September 2026, as I run THE CRUCIBLE, the short story writing process that incorporates all the essentials you need to learn and practice if you want to write well. If you want to know more click here
See you soon!
