Why Everyone Must Practice Writing

In my last newsletter, I had promised to tell you why everyone must write. And here I am, sharing with you why I feel so. Backed by research and common wisdom.

Einstein said,

The time comes in life when we have read enough. It's time to stop reading. It's time to lay down the books and write.

Research has proved that writing removes your mental blocks and allows you to use all your brain power. If you keep telling yourself that you don't need to write regularly, let me see if these conversation snippets sound familiar.

"Did you send the reply mail to the client?"

"Is your presentation complete?"

"I have to finish this report before lunch."

"Tomorrow is the last day for filling up the appraisal form."

I am sure I have got your interest. Because these can be found floating around in a typical office. I am sure you can think of 10 more occasions when writing was what you had to really do under the garb of something else. Do share in the comments if you have an especially horrendous or humorous experience!!

Closer home, literally, how many times have you passed on the responsibility of teaching the kid to your partner just because you find it difficult to help her write answers? More times than you care to admit, right?

In a research study with biology students, researchers compared critical thinking performance of students who experienced a laboratory writing treatment with those who experienced traditional quiz-based laboratory. Results indicated that the writing group significantly improved critical thinking skills whereas the non-writing group did not. 

Now that I have your attention, let me begin with some writing myths. Because all nagging doubts must be laid to rest before anything fruitful can be achieved.

Writing means stories and poems, and it's not my cup of tea

This is a very common misconception. One that I have stopped talking about in my social interactions. Because I am tired of telling people that writing does not mean you are always writing stories or poems.

When I was working, people were happy with the name of my company and never enquired what I did there. Barring a few and then when they asked, they were willing to listen to what I had to say.

When I started freelancing there was this pressure to explain to others that I was doing something meaningful and hence I had to say I write. Before I would finish my sentence, the next question would be what books I had published!! And then I would dive into long tirade about how online writing was not just writing stories and poems. In fact that was not even part of my repertoire at that point of time. The moment I would say this, people would look at me as if they were face to face with the biggest online scamster!!

Today I feel the need to talk about it because I know it stops many people from writing itself. I will say just one thing. Most of the stories and poems I have ever written are still lying in my diaries and my hard disk. They are yet to see the light of the day. The writing that I do on most of the days include:

• Blogs
• White papers
• Case studies
• Newsletters
• Website pages
• Ebooks
• Tutorials
• Questionnaires
• Podcast scripts

And then there are many more different types of writings that I don't do but others engage in, like:

• Advertisement
• Emails
• Videos scripts
• Etc. Etc. Etc.

Do you see novels, short stories, flash fiction, haiku, poems, etc. listed here? Agreed that there are people who do that, but then there are so many who do not. This just goes to show show that there are different types of writings and let us not fix our mind on things that we cannot do or do not want to do.

You must write in impeccable grammar

Ha! You are writing in your own journal. Who is going to read it? You and only you. It's only when you feel confident of sharing your thoughts that you need to make others read what you have written.

If the only person who is reading what you are writing is you, you can afford to write in not so impeccable grammar if that is the only thing holding you back.

Not convinced, try this:

You don't even need to write in complete sentences. Just write in bullet points what you want to.

I am myself a big fan of writing in bullet points. I was never good at rote learning when in school or college. And anyone who has gone through any schooling or college knows that there are some things that you just have to mug up. So what was the way out for me?

I would read the text I was trying to learn and write them as bullet points of important terms or concepts repeatedly. Then I would read them multiple times and Lo and behold I could remember them easily. When it came to write or tell the answers, all I had to do was string those important points together in sentences.

Do the same with your journal.

Write in bullet points or very short sentences. That has an added advantage. If you are journaling to crystallize the ideas in your head it is easier to refer to the bullet points rather than extract things out of long paragraphs.

Or, why don't you write like you code, or your programmer friend does

Well, time for confession.

Most of you might not be aware that I have a postgraduate degree in computer science. Coding was an integral part of my education, and I was (and still am) a passionate coder as well. But even if you have never written a single line of code you must be knowing that codes always needs to be debugged. That's nothing but correcting the mistakes in your code so that it runs successfully. Which is just a polite way of saying that you did not write the code correctly the first time. And mind you, it is not essential that the first debugging makes the code run. We might need to debug the code multiple times before it runs successfully.

So why don't you right as if you are coding. Knowing that you can always correct your mistakes later. The grammar, sentence construction, even the choice of words doesn't have to be perfect the first time. You can correct or rather change what you have written later. The best part is, there is never a wrong piece of writing because everybody has a different way of conveying their ideas.

Journaling is same a writing a diary, and I must do it every day

Well, nothing could be further from the truth. Diary is a chronological record of your activities whereas journaling is a creative exploration of ideas. When you have some ideas about your personal life, professional life, business ideas, long term goals, etc. that you would like to explore, you write in your journal. And you will agree that these are things that everyone thinks about.

If you have told yourself till now that you would want to write but find it difficult to do so, it's time to stop and find why you find it difficult to write. May be you cannot decide what to write about?

So, what all can you journal about?

Whatever confusions you have in your mind, journal about them and you will find clarity. Whenever you are faced with a difficult situation, write about it in your journal and you will find the solution staring you in the face. If you don't believe me, why don't you start journaling and see for yourself (wink, wink).

When you find success, journal about it to let it sink in and understand how you can sustain or repeat it.

Let me share some of the things I have written about in my own journals over the past couple of years:

• problems faced with clients
• courses that I took and what was worth emulating
• why my health could be failing
• what needed to be done to control my expenses
• how I could increase my reading time
• the different cold pitching options
• step count every day
• articles whose content was really crap, and what should have been written instead

In fact, the idea for this newsletter took shape in my journal. Someday, when I feel confident enough, I will share the screenshots with you. They are really horrible with all the scratchings and bullet lists in all directions!!

That's all for this week. Next week, I will share with you some tips to make journaling a regular practice.

Meanwhile, why don't you start your own journal and share your experiences with us.