Last week, I expressed how funny writing was because I would start with a thought — something I want to say — but in the process of composing the introduction and adding supporting details, what I originally wanted to say is sometimes left unsaid and I have a different output from the one I had in mind. My fellow columnist, Tyrone Velez, expressed the same sentiment, saying that writing is a process of exploring and discovering where your ideas lead you.
I am, of course, referring to “writing” in the context of creative work (for example, when I am writing my weekly columns or fiction), not when I write business letters, memos, instructions, policies or the like. The latter type of writing needs to be concise and on point. It would be a disaster to have a business letter saying something other than what I want to say.
The process of exploration and discovery appeals to me. As a kid, I used to enjoy Choose Your Own Adventure books. Instead of merely following the story, you make choices along the way and the book tells you to turn to this page if you make choice A and turn to that page if you make choice B and there were several possibilities about how the events played out and I would weave in and out of those until I had exhausted all the storylines and endings.
Then along came computer games. The very first type of games I played were arcade style shooting games like Space Invaders or Asteroids. But I tired of those very quickly. Then I discovered adventure games where you can go around, examine and pick up stuff, and use them to solve problems that come your way. You could, for example, find a piece of gum, chew it, and later use the gum to plug a hole in a wall or something like that.
Today, the games I enjoy the most are those that are open-ended and offer many possibilities of action and multiple ways of solving a problem. I don’t like it when things are too scripted and contrived.
I guess that’s how it is too with my writing. Some of the works I like the most are those that just seem to flow out of me — when I don’t try too hard to inject this or that thought into it. That is not to say that I don’t edit and polish later on (I do — and sometimes I delete entire paragraphs and rewrite them). But it’s always a pleasure when the piece takes a life of its own — like watching a child make its first steps. You don’t want to put the child on a leash and direct his every move, but rather you’re just there hovering in the background ready to support him if he falls.
Maybe that’s why when I was a teacher, I never liked making lesson plans. The way some seminar speakers talk about making lesson plans made it so artificial and contrived — like you had to plan every minute of your class time — that I hated it and rebelled against it. I would often just write a short 1-2-3 of what I wanted to do. Sometimes, I would just write one sentence. In around 8 years of teaching high school, I never finished a year making lesson plans. I just gave up somewhere in the middle or towards the end.
What I really wanted to happen was just to present the lesson, see how the students responded, and proceed based on that response. What I enjoyed most was the interaction I got when students were engaged. Sometimes, we wouldn’t be talking about the lesson itself anymore but some other aspect of life — but that didn’t mean it was less important or any less meaningful.
Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.