Writing and Thinking

What's the difference between writing and thinking ?

Writing is an action, it’s doing something, it’s something more like a water, flowing away smoothly without knowing where to go or end but will eventually end at some point, the ocean. While thinking is more like doing nothing, or doing thing with our mind. Writing does need to be thought of so that we can lead our writing to the way we want. But thinking it too much is just going to create disaster for it.

When we write, it’s common to get stuck in the middle of the writing. What we don’t know is that we don’t get stuck because of the lack of inspiration but more because of lack of formal / polite / beautiful words to communicate our thoughts. The idea and inspiration is there, we know exactly that what we want to write in our mind. It’s just that we don’t know how to form the thoughts into beautiful, formal words. Another thing that we might not realize is that when people read our writing, they read our thoughts, our inspiration, our idea in the hope of being inspired or acknowledged by it. They do read our form of words, but those form of words is just the media and not the core of the writing. So, actually we really don’t have to get stuck in the middle of writing because of that. Furthermore, a too beautiful or too formal form of words will only create a boring and tough reading for readers. And as we know, those kind of readings are not really popular. It’s right that some people do read those things, but it’s only like 1 in the scale of 1 to 10 and usually for purpose of particular education. For us, we actually write to be read by all kinds of people from different social status. These people hate tough and boring reading. Yes, they want to get knowledge by reading but they also want to get it in a relax and enjoying way. That’s why if we look at the newspaper now, the language and form of writing in there is no longer the formal and boring way. Because they do realize if they continue doing that way, their newspaper is only going to end up dusty in the attic or even in the agency itself.

Once we think too much about our writing, we change our activity from writing into thinking. We no longer do activities and flow like a river, we get stuck like a mud, thinking, trying to speak up our thoughts which actually can be done in an easy way. Writing is suppose to be a relaxing activity, something we do because we like to do it, our hobby, and not something that only gives us pressure while doing it. If writing is actually giving us pressure, then we might have to look inside ourselves and find what’s wrong. Maybe we still get stuck in the idea of forming beautiful words instead of communicating idea. Whatever the reason is, solve it, unless our writing will always be the dull and boring one. Writing it won’t give us any satisfaction or pride. We will always look it as something not good enough, not perfect enough. And this kind of thing might result to unwillingness to publish it  which furthermore make our writing even more useless because why would we write something if no one reads it, why would we write something if it’s only for collection. Our idea or inspiration in those writings is not going anywhere, is not giving any knowledge or inspiration to anyone, even if we have worked too hard in forming those ideas in beautiful words.

So now, if we want to write something, first, write down your idea and don’t think of the idea. The evaluation can come after the writing but not during the writing. Second, release ourselves from having to produce a beautiful form of word, write it in our way. Because actually that’s what will make it special, different from others. Third, be proud of it because no matter how it is, we actually succeed in communicating our idea and with that people can learn from it. And finally, always open to suggestion. We’re not perfect and because of that our work don’t have to be perfect all the time. What we can do is to always make it better while still keeping it in our way.