On Why

I was at a conference in Switzerland. A reader came up to me and asked, “Vitaliy, I’ve been reading your articles for years. I’d like to write. How should I start?”

This question spilled into a long conversation over dinner. I told him what I shared above – “Set time and place and show up for so many hours a day or a week.” His eyes got a bit sadder, his face was overcome with frustration, and he said, “I knew you’d say that. I tried it. It’s so hard. I’ve spent weeks staring at the computer and wrote complete garbage.”

I could feel and relate to his pain. I said empathetically, “Welcome to my world. Frustration, garbage, empty pages are par for the course in writing. But you need to keep struggling through till you write something you like, something you are proud of. It doesn’t have to be a book. Just a short story or an article is fine. But once you accomplish it, you’ll feel like a superhuman, even if just for an hour or two a day. You’ll experience a parental sort of pride and joy over what you’ve written. Bottle up and treasure this feeling. It may be awhile before you experience it again. But this feeling is what will keep bringing you back. It will help you to soldier through your weeks filled with garbage on your pages.”

I continued.

“In writing, quantity and quality are joined at the hip. This doesn’t mean that a longer article means a better article, not at all. However, writing is a craft (and an art); and as with any craft, higher output (quantity) is directly related to experience. Experience provides muscle memory; it teaches you how to do things better. It is also gives you confidence and the courage to keep coming back to the empty, flickering screen. Writing is a journey on which experience will help you find your voice.

“The beauty of writing in the digital age is that it’s very easy to tinker with what you’ve written. Write five pages, then edit them down to three, then to one. The first draft is just me emptying my subconscious.”

At this point I got sick of my “garbage” analogy and switched to a new (and flawed) one:

“Writing is rewriting is not an empty platitude. I live by it. One rewrite at a time, and by the 47th rewrite the initial pile of coals that was dumped onto white pages from your subconscious will slowly turn into orderly diamonds. Think of rewriting as forging coal into diamonds. It is a long and laborious process.”

His face brightened a little – he could see that his writing struggle was not just unique to him but a universal one. He inquired, “You just said experience will help you to find your voice. How?”

“Your voice is that internal writing frequency where you have to exert less effort to create. It feels organic, not manufactured. It is you being you. You earlier told me that you want to pass your life lessons on to your son. Well, then don’t visualize an empty void. It’s very difficult to write for some empty, inanimate purpose. It’s easier to write for someone you love or can relate to. When I started writing for TheStreet.com I could not visualize its readers, so I visualized my friends. They were the first victims of my writing. I unilaterally decided that I shall write, and they shall receive. And receive my emails they did. I kept them in my mind’s eye as I wrote to them, and this helped me to keep my writing voice conversational.”

The guy was patiently listening. I could sense conflict percolating in his head. Suddenly he had a eureka moment and blurted out, “Maybe I should hire a ghost writer.”

I replied, “It depends on why you want to write. If your goal is just to produce a tome of your thoughts for your son and nothing else, then sure. But if your goal to discover what you think; if writing attracts you as creative endeavor; then hiring a ghost writer is like deciding to get healthy and hiring someone to go to the gym for you. To paraphrase Anaïs Nin, ‘I write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.’ ”

This conversation made me rethink something important about writing. I was of the belief that everyone should write. After all, writing takes you on a date with your subconscious – few activities do that. But this conversation made me realize that if we are to commit ourselves for a long time to any creative activity, we need to have a “why.” Why is a deeply personal reason, something that brings meaning to you and only you. What lies on the other side of a completed article, that knowledge I gain, is my “why” for writing. I enjoy the pain that comes with writing as much as any other non-masochistic human enjoys a trip to the dentist. But the “why” helps me to push through this pain and start the day staring at a blank screen, knowing that I might have another difficult and frustrating few hours ahead of me.

Happiness in life comes from having good problems. Writing, just like investing, is a good problem for me. It adds meaning to my life. If you don’t have “why”, then… well, let me give you one last example. I’d like to paint. Well, actually, I wouldn’t. I’d like to have painted beautiful paintings. Just like my reader friend might like to have written. Learning to paint is a lot of hard work. Unlike my father and my brother Alex, who receive incredible creative satisfaction from painting, I don’t. I tried. To quote my son’s favorite artist, J. Cole, I don’t experience “beauty in the struggle” when it comes to painting. I don’t have the “why.” So, I don’t paint. Thus, if you want to write, figure out if you have the “why.” If you don’t, find something where you do.