The verb ‘writing’ appears, upon first glance, to be a rather simple one. It denotes the act of taking up a pen or pencil and simply penning down whatever one wishes to. Today, however, writing, in a literary sense, has come to mean both writing and typing. Undoubtedly, it is more convenient to type out pieces on a laptop or a desktop—simultaneously being able to check the number of words, the spelling and grammar and of course, edit with a few clicks of a mouse-button. There are some people who still take up a pen and write their words on paper before transcribing this to the computer. Indeed, I am certain that we are all acquainted with that one person who will choose to travel with a minimum of necessities, but will ensure the presence of, if not a book, a few sheets of paper and a pen. How works are produced does not matter, it is the works themselves that do.
There is present today an image of a writer and how to become one. A friend of mine once showed me a WikiHow article titled ‘How to be a writer in nine steps’. Perhaps the methods describe work and perhaps they do not. Perhaps they work for some people and not for others. Perhaps writing is something which comes naturally to some people and is something which others have to develop. I know people who create their own environment to create their pieces. Indeed, there are people with the strangest foibles—some require music while other require absolute quiet. Some feel the need to walk up and down, as did the poet who wander’d as lonely as a cloud, speaking their words out loud before writing them down. A few require certain kinds of comestibles to be present in specific quantities to aid their creativity, just as a certain William George Bunter required a constant supply of consumables, not to aid his creativity, but to satisfy his rather large appetite. Perhaps some people take something stronger, as did Coleridge and de Quincey. Some others require to be present in a particular place, at their desk with a familiar view or seated in a particular chair at a particular position to be able to write. For others, it is activity they value—such as writing in a crowded café or in a railway station.
One might say that it’s all very well to have foibles while writing, eccentricities which help one in their craft. But what does one write? One cannot simply ramble on aimlessly for an indefinite length. There must be some substance, however little, which must be present. Political works, one or two treatises on the government, perhaps? Essays concerning the human understanding? Novels concerning combinations of dishes—such as eggs, beans and crumpets—that one must not eat? Stories involving drama and romance and pathos- perhaps about a poor orphan in England who becomes a governess to a wealthy man’s ward? Or should one write prose at all? Why not poetry- poems about war-weary soldiers ‘drunk with fatigue’? On beautiful women with no mercy who sing a ‘faery’s song’? Or of balls in Brussels resplendent with riches which were interrupted by the outbreak of war? Above all, can one succeed in one’s attempt to attain a decent reputation when highly-established, eminent persons already exist in that field?
To quote Maugham, ‘the world in general doesn’t know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.’ Originality is appreciated by a wealth of people, in the past and today. Whoever heard of a novel concerning an English lord, his dominating sister, his daredevil of a brother and a pig? Whoever heard of the same event being described differently by ten different people becoming a novel? Of a world governed by a seemingly modern rule which required people to kill each other as a way of ensuring their obedience? These story lines are from popular, even famous novels. Indeed, most books today are not very far from the novels written years, even centuries ago. The events of novels, will, at some point in time, begin to assume similarities with other works. There are only so many events which can take place in so many instances of time and put together, that results in a definite, albeit rather large number of permutations and combinations.
There are no requirements, especially today when anything different from the staid, familiar forms are given more than a second glance. No longer do poets write in iambic pentametres and hexametres and alexandrines as a matter of form. No longer do writers employ, on a regular basis, terrifically long and convoluted sentences to convey their thoughts. Writers of today can write in any form they please, without having to conform to patterns set by writers of yore. This results in an absence of rules, and an unlimited imagination, and the freedom to pen down any idea which occurs to a mind, in any manner one pleases, including forms of one’s own creation.
While the above may appear to be a weak attack on modern styles and forms, I urge readers to read the above paragraph. New and varied styles of writing exist only in relation to the old ones and we understand them in terms of their predecessors or in terms of each other—surely we’ve all heard expressions such as, ‘It’s rather Victorian writing, but with time-travelling in it’ or ‘Dickensian descriptions in a monologue’. It is an inescapable fact that we use such terms (and many more), to term written pieces today, which have evolved from generations of people conforming to what was believed to be the ‘best’ way to write and generations of people challenging this and writing in their own way.
Writing requires no study of style and form unless one wishes to do so. One can write upon any topic they choose to, in any style—a mixture of two or more styles even—or none at all. It does not matter, there are no constraints—one can speak of mobile phones and the Regency era in the same breath if one wishes to do so and if the sentence speaks sense. Or indeed, the sentence need not make sense, as Carroll has shown us. A good, even fairly decent, command over the language the work is to be written in is all that is necessary. However, I must point out that there are two reasons for persons to write—either because they want to or because they have to, or both. If a person writes because he or she wishes to do so, then the matter need not be of concern, thoughts, opinions, fantasy and nonsense can be penned down in one jumble or in neat sections as desired. If, however, it is because one has to, the necessity implies publication, which implies having to be a success with the readers. In that case, one must always judge what is wished for consumption and try to write in such a way as will satisfy the populace. A chance might be taken and the writer may publish any odd work he writes, whether or not it conforms to what the public wants or is used to, and it might receive enormous praise and popularity. Writing as a profession appears to be quite shaky until one gains a firm foothold. One never knows with writing—whether works of sense or nonsense or a happy amalgamation of both shall catch the fancy of people’s imaginations and appetites.
Article 19 