"I write so I can think better..."

My very first article was published in my college magazine. I wrote about a crazy experience I had at a restaurant in Mumbai. I had a plate of samosa and a cup of tea. I was getting ready to ask for the bill and reached for my wallet. I took it out looked for two ten rupee notes. To my utter horror there was just one Rs 10 note - not enough to pay the bill. The money was just enough for my bus fare home.

I quietly slipped away unnoticed. I wrote about that experience under the title "The One That Got Away" in our college magazine. Our head of the department of physics Professor C P Narayana Menon quite liked that. He said "You write well. Write more often." That is how my writing started.

I kept writing from time to time. Then came a major opportunity when I was heading Ogilvy & Mather Direct. I wrote a series for The Hindu Business Line. Thereafter I wrote another series called Idealyst about ideas, creativity and innovation.

Then started my obsession about writing. I read a number of books about writing. Ogilvy & Mather valued good writing. They published a book called How To Write Better (I think it is now called writing that works). The reference section had mentioned a number of books - I bought most of those books.

When David Ogilvy visited our office he was quite impressed with our library. He once wrote me a mail urging me to continue writing because he felt that I had the talent.

I then got hooked on to understanding readability. I came to know that there is a readability index. It is called the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Index. It will indicate how difficult or easy it is to understand what you write.

Today MS Word has a feature which tells you about the readability score of what you have written. Type a document in MS Word. Go to spelling and grammar and select that. What the programme does is check the spelling and grammar. Finally it gives you a Readability Report.

It tells you the number words, characters, sentences etc. The last section is the Readability section. It gives you three indicators.

Flesch Readability Ease. Higher the score, the better the readability.

I have another app called the Hemingway App. The Hemingway App has given me the following scores:

Readability - Good Grade 4 (someone who has studied upto grade 4 can understand what I have written)

4 Adverbs. Aim for 3 or less.

2 Sentences use passive voice, meeting the goal of 8 or fewer.

3 Phrases have simpler alternatives.

1 of 40 sentences is difficult to read

0 of 40 sentences is very difficult to read

There is another app called Grammarly. That too is helpful.

But there is more to it than readability of what I write.

For me writing is relaxing. Sometimes I think and write. Often I think as I am writing - there are times I get ideas as I am writing. When I started writing this piece about writing, I had not planned to write about Hemingway or readability statistics. It just happened.

I also get many insights and new ideas as I write. Sometimes I try to visualise who might read this piece. That leads me to add or delete something. Sometimes I write for myself. Then I am more critical. When I write for my grandchildren it is more relaxed and fun.

I discovered something called free writing. Free Writing is about thinking as you write. Let me give you an example. Let us say I want to get new clients. Instead of thinking of a marketing plan, I could start writing about getting more business. Write as the thoughts come. It is like brainstorming. I write every thought or an idea that comes to my mind. I don't censor anything.

Let me demonstrate it for you. I have a talk coming up soon - topic 'How to bust mental blocks'. Almost every one I know has had a mental block. Immediate feeling words that pop up in mind are feeling stuck, frustrating, demotivating, traffic jam in my mind etc.

I can pick any one of these and develop it further. Let us take the traffic jam sample. What do you do if you are stuck in a traffic when you are on your way to important meeting? Your driver gets out of the car, goes ahead to check why is there a traffic jam. Comes back reports to you that an earthmoving equipment has fallen on its side. It will take a couple of hours before the traffic clears up.

You curse your luck and sit in the car fiddling with your mobile. Then you notice all the two wheeler guys are moving ahead. In a flash you think of an idea. You tell the driver to bring the car to the client's office. Get out of the car, hitch a ride with a motorbike driver who drops you next to a cab stand. You take the cab and move forward.

So what do you do when you have a mental traffic jam? For me the motor bike represents another, completely different topic. I take a break and start writing about another subject I am fond of. Soon I get the flow and the traffic jam in my mind clears.

That was my example of free writing.

All this writing has energised me. I have so many ideas on several things that I am working on. I just have to stop here to capture all those ideas.

What happens to you when you write? What is energising, exhilarating, frustrating? Feel free to share your comments.