Unstructured thoughts on structured writing

It is hard to get back to writing.Why did I give up writing? Maybe because I have nothing more to say? Probably not. I think it is more likely that I stopped writing here because writing here became a chore. Its always like that. You start doing something (referred to as "the thing" henceforth, at least in this paragraph, because using too many pronouns isn't polite) because its fun. You do it for a while, then perhaps you get better at it. After sometime , you notice that you have been doing the thing pretty regularly, and also, you seem to be improving at it. So you make a mental note, that you should keep doing the thing with the same frequency. Sooner or later, this resolution becomes a burden, because you no longer are doing the thing when you want to, you are doing it when your calender tells you its time to.

Of course, with writing, it is important to make sense. To have something to say. I have often wrote in the past when I had nothing to say. I think I read something about stream of consciousness writing, and I often tried to let my thoughts flow out on this blog. Except, that thoughts do not flow freely when you are trying to record them. I can imagine that someone somewhere would have painted a picture of a seated author bent over a piece of paper, and the painting would depict thoughts (which would perhaps be painted as a blueish haze) flowing straight from his head onto the paper through the pen and the hand holding the pen. But it doesn't quite work that way. Because writing must make sense, and thoughts don't in general. There is no structure to the stream of thoughts. It flits around from idea to idea to idea, unless you are trying to focus it on a particular idea (then again, people like me find it hard to shut out the noise even when we are trying to think of a specific thing).In fact, I am not even sure that at any given time the stream of thoughts is actually representable by the act of writing. What if you actually had a way of thinking undisturbed and actually recording your thoughts in a continuous fashion, as an external observer would if he could witness your thoughts. But say you were thinking of two things at the same time. True stream of consciousness writing would  be when the very word I am typing at a given instant exactly represents the thought passing through my brain at that instant. So if you had two thoughts passing through your brain simultaneously, you would have no way of completely representing your stream of thoughts at that moment. Of course, whether the brain can actually process two thoughts simultaneously is moot.

So I guess true stream of consciousness writing would be a cool thing, but I haven't quite figured out a way to record my undisturbed thoughts without disturbing them. Maybe I am too self conscious. I think that is why I believe that writing must have structure. Unstructured thoughts are dangerous. Cannot let them flow out for all to see. Cannot even let them flow out for me to see. But yes, it really helps if one knows what he wants to write about before sitting down to write. But if one has to write regularly, and has to know what he is going to be writing about each time he sits down to write, he must have views.

Yes. Views. This is why I stopped writing. I have no views. I have no views about most things. And most views I have about the very few things I deem worthy enough of my attention (so that I at least know enough about them to have views) are not views that can be made public. They are better kept as private views. Was I forming views all these years? Maybe. I have to think about it. Or maybe not. After all, this blog post wasn't really about anything when it started off, because I didn't have something I definitely wished to write about. But not having enough views (or at least, enough views that can be shared publicly) does make maintaining a regular blogging habit quite a chore. One cannot rely on rantings and ramblings to keep writing. One has to have stuff. material. views etc. Of course, once in a while, its fun to just write whatever comes to one's mind, whether it is a true representation of thoughts at that time, or merely a failed attempt. But can't do it regularly.

But there is a beautiful thing about writing, that is that writing invariably forces thoughts to converge onto a steady flow along a straight line. I have experienced this quite often, where I start writing a post about nothing in particular, and it leads to some conclusion, something definite, or if nothing, resolution to some vague half formed question in my brain. After all, that is why we are told the importance of writing while we study. It helps focus the beam of thoughts. Maybe I will write more often. Its fun, as long as I don't overdo it again. But of course, I am older. But then again, I am still me.