On Writing

 Writing is a craft that you lose if you don't keep practicing.

I don't like losing things, and writing happens to make that list of things I do not want to lose. That is, of course, assuming that I "have" it, whatever that means.

For the longest time, I used to believe that I am not good at writing. Then I started to doubt that thought like many of my opinions about myself. For example, I used to think that I don't have good intuition about anything. Then, I came to find out that I am actually pretty intuitive. I am just wary of notions and judgments, the logical origins of which I cannot fully explain to myself. Hence, I had not been listening to my intuitive judgments about people and situations since such judgments seemed arbitrary and unreasonable.

My opinion about my own writing follows a similar pattern. I am no Jane Austen. Yet, I have this urge to write and moments of inspiration. I want to write because I want to express my truth.

Writing has helped me discover things about myself that I did not always readily admit. Self-discovery was not my goal when I started keeping a journal during my first year in college. I am not sure if I had any goals at all. I just wanted to express my thoughts. And being away from my family and friends in a foreign land, there was not much of an audience for my inner conversations. Moreover, sometimes my thoughts and feelings seemed too complicated to work out without jotting anything down. That was the moment writing became my outlet.

My thoughts toward writing have evolved throughout the years. First, I felt I needed to describe and explain everything in a chronological and logical manner. This often impeded my flow because thoughts do not always follow a pre-determined pattern. I had to let my thoughts guide my writing not the other way around. 

I had assumed that writing helps me sort my thoughts because of the chronology and logical manner in which I put things on paper or on a word document file. I could not have been more wrong. A clearer mind was a byproduct of letting your thoughts flow and guide your writing. You will have plenty of time to edit later on.