The Writing Life

I have loved books since childhood and somewhere along the way I also became interested in writing. In my twenties and thirties becoming a writer was a dream second only to my passion for photography. Naturally I experimented with merging the two, but this turned out to be easier said than done. Nevertheless I read voraciously, wrote whenever I could, and looked for ways to improve my writing skills.

In particular, I went through a period of searching out and reading books on writing. It turns out that so many people dream of becoming a writer (and, presumably, escaping their humdrum existence) that there is a cottage industry of such books. The classic, for me and many others, is The Elements of Style written by Will Strunk and E.B. White. Strunk was an English professor at Cornell University. White was a renowned American writer and a student of Strunk's.

Strunk and White show the basics of writing: how to construct a sentence, how to write correct, persuasive and direct prose, how to omit needless words. However, many other books of the genre go further by showing the reader a path to becoming a writer.

There is, for example, Natalie Goldberg's Wild Mind which offers a Zen approach to turning your life around to become a writer. On Writing Well by William Zinsser gently complements Strunk and White. Many serious writers revere John Gardner, who, in The Art of Fiction, coined a new term, "profluence" to help aspiring writers with the notion of the flow of a story.

Back then, I had no idea about how many others read these books until one day in the early 1990s I saw a notice for a book reading by Ms. Goldberg and showed up at the event. It was held in the evening at Keppler's in Menlo Park, probably the nicest bookstore in northern California. I went there expecting a small coterie of the faithful. Instead, the large store was brimming with people, mostly professional Silicon Valley types who had arrived after work. I recognized two colleagues from my company, Charles and Susan, with whom I interacted often during work. I had never known they nurtured a passion for writing.

That day it became clear to me how widespread the writing dream is. One could grow a large following by writing books for aspiring writers. These books are usually enjoyable and thought-provoking. They give the aspiring writer a warm and fuzzy feeling about a possible writing career, thus keeping the dream alive. Most of them bypass the cruel reality of how hard it is to "make it" as a writer, but so what?

We often hear stories about famous writers – larger than life geniuses such as Tagore, Hemingway or Tolstoy – and are tempted to draw romanticized pictures in our imagination. However, writing is a demanding and difficult task. As Hemingway said, "Writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open up a vein."

Writing is also something that can be learned and improved. In my case, I found discipline, practice, and an occasional encounter with the how-to book helped a great deal.

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