Skip to main content

Writer and his society



All genuine writing is rooted in at least 3 things:
1.     the complex social reality which the writer is trying to understand and interpret;
2.     the literary tradition in the Eliotean sense; and
3.     the writer’s heart.

The writer has to be constantly in touch with the world around him. Unless he understands that world, unless he is in constant touch with it, how can he write about it meaningfully? Good writers are sensitive people whose hearts are moved by what is happening around them.

William Faulkner advised writers to “read, read, read”.  He asked them to “read everything: trash, classics, good and bad.” Absorb what you’re reading, then write. Without such moorings in the literary tradition, no one can be a good writer.

The interpretation of the reality around comes from the writer’s heart, from his entire personality. Writing is the bleeding of the heart, as Hemingway suggested. Whatever has not been processed in the writer’s heart fails to carry conviction.

So, can a writer afford to distance himself from the society?


The process of writing is different from writing per se. More often than not, the process requires solitude. Most great writers have/had their own private, solitary places for the process of writing. While the reality around is necessary for providing the raw material for writing, the process of writing is a very personal affair. The writer has to detach himself from the world. Of course, you can be in the middle of a crowd and yet be detached.

Now to answer the question raised at In[di]spire, if you are going to write a book you might do well by shutting off yourself from the distractions of social media and even the society as much as you can. Good writers have their own disciplined schedule like setting aside a particular period of time every day to the process of writing without being distracted by anything. Such commitment is essential if you wish to be a good writer.



Comments

  1. voicesJanuary 13, 2019 at 10:15 AM

    Could not have chosen better words to differ from Anthony Trollope's idea of writing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 13, 2019 at 11:06 AM

      I'm not sure i differ much from Trollope. Thank you for the appreciation.

      Delete
  2. Jyotirmoy SarkarJanuary 13, 2019 at 7:30 PM

    Totally agree with your three points and the rest of the post, very nice take on the prompt.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Neeraj KumarJanuary 13, 2019 at 9:38 PM

    Very right explanations!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Arvind PasseyJanuary 14, 2019 at 11:13 AM

    So reading and interacting are different? However, when a person reads isn't he interacting with both known and unknown realities of the world? And when a person is merely interacting through the written and the spoken words isn't he also immersed in the process of reading in some ways?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 14, 2019 at 1:37 PM

      Aren't reading and interaction different? My experience says yes. I hardly meet people who enlighten me the way books do.

      Delete
  5. Gowthama RajaveluJanuary 14, 2019 at 11:50 AM

    Reading impacts writing, I agree but experience matters the most and it shapes our writing process and also makes it even more meaningful which goes on to become influential. It all depends on how he perceives the world around him.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 14, 2019 at 1:39 PM

      Of course, i never meant to discredit experience. The very first point in my list underscores the importance of experience.

      Delete
  6. Ruchira KhannaJanuary 15, 2019 at 12:07 AM

    I agree with you!
    Need solitude to write from my heart.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 15, 2019 at 6:44 AM

      Solitude has a special knack for connecting us with our hearts.

      Delete
  7. AmritaJanuary 15, 2019 at 3:18 PM

    So very true.Raw material and the process of writing itself are two different things . Good writers are sensitive people whose hearts are moved by what is happening around them.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Insecurity and Exclusivism

“ Hindu khatare mein hai.” This was one of the first slogans that accompanied the emergence of Narendra Modi on the national scene. It means Hindus are in Danger . It reveals a deep-rooted feeling of insecurity. Hindus constitute an overwhelming majority in India – 80%. All the high positions in governance, judiciary, academics, any significant place, are occupied by Hindus. Yet the slogan was born. Strange? It will be facile to argue that Modi used this slogan and its concomitant hatred of Muslims and Christians as a political weapon for winning votes. True, he was successful in that; he rose to the highest political post in the country using minority-bashing. But the hatred did not end with that achievement; rather it spread outward and became more exclusive. Muslim and European rulers of India were booted out from the country’s history books and wherever else possible like the names of roads and institutions. With vengeance. Now there is a concerted effort going on to place In...
13 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

You Don’t Know the Sky

I asked the bird to lend me wings. I longed to fly like her. Gracefully. She tilted her head and said, “Wings won’t be of any use to you because you don’t know the sky.” And she flew away. Into the sky. For a moment, I was offended. What arrogance! Does she think she owns the sky? As I watched the bird soar effortlessly into the blue vastness, I began to see what she meant. I wanted wings, not the flight. Like wanting freedom without the responsibility that comes with it. The bird had earned her wings. Through storms, through hunger, through braving the odds. She manoeuvred her way among the missiles that flew between invisible borders erected by us humans. She witnessed the macabre dance of death that brought down cities, laid waste a whole country. Wings are about more than flights. How often have you perched on the stump of a massive tree brought down by a falling warhead and wept looking at the debris of civilisations? The language of the sky is different from tha...
13 comments
Read more