Inside our writer instincts

i have a question for you all

do you consider yourself a writer

at this point many people say no they

back away and that’s very understandable

because

when we think of writers we don’t think

of us

we don’t think of me although we should

think of me because i’m very attractive

i’m sorry i’ll quit the jokes but um in

all seriousness i think

when we think of writers we think of

something like this

it’s either an extremely intense manner

woman hiding away somewhere in a forest

typing away ferociously while nursing a

bad back because writing gives you

arthritis

while nursing an alcohol habit because

alcohol is necessary for good writing

or while having a nicotine habit because

what inspiration comes

other than when you smoke cigarettes

that’s definition number one the other

definition is

the public intellectual someone who’s

sharp

someone who can think someone who can

give lectures and participate in debates

someone like shashi tarou or jordan

peterson

it’s not because of all of these things

they’re writers they’re writers because

they can write newspaper bylines and

books

like they’re not mortals like it’s too

easy for them

and the third kind of writer is a

definition we usually resign ourselves

to

it’s the struggling student of

literature the jhula chap

you know the the some the someone who

works at

buzzfeed but can’t fail to quote fairs

emmett affairs

the guy who keeps track of trends on

twitter but pretends to talk about

nature at parties you don’t know

nietzsche

but what if i rephrase my question let’s

do that you know instead of asking you

like hey are you a writer or not let me

ask you something simpler

did you write anything today

as in did you put words on paper today

better yet did you type

sentences on your phone

or on your laptop

suddenly many of you will say yes you

will say yes

number of course i texted my friends and

told them the party was on even when

there was a pandemic outside

of course the number i emailed my

professor saying that i’m no longer

coming to class

of course i made my grocery lists on a

sheet of paper of course

i established my smart goals

my friends when you were doing those

wonderful wonderful things

you were writing i know it comes off as

a surprise but

the act of that is no different

than writing a creative piece of fiction

an essay a blog post or a bloody poem

it’s literally the same both are acts of

writing except one you do

for specific creative publishing

purposes the other

you just do because you can write

because you’re literate

right because you know how to either use

your native language

or english letters you know that very

well right you’ve don’t learn that in

school

so then why do we still have the problem

of many of us

not claiming our identity as writers

as chroniclers of our personal histories

why do we hesitate

to describe the world we live in not to

everyone else but to ourself

why are we afraid of dialoguing with

ourselves why are we afraid

of calling ourselves writers where all

of us

are

once again i think the problem lies in

definitions

it isn’t that the intellectual elite

have hijacked the world of writing

it’s us we have pigeonholed ourselves

we have boxed ourselves in we have

decided this is the conventional

definition of oh writer is

and this is it is not

that limits us that runs

us the risk of living unexamined lives

that runs us the risk of having no

personal history

of having to rely on other people

to make sense of our past our present

and our future

that makes us leave

a gift that our ancestors could have

never received

because they did not know how to use the

written word

but in order to facilitate my argument

further

let me tell you a story because stories

well they work wonders

so in 2020 when the world was ravaged by

code 19 like many people i felt

broken and beaten by a force i didn’t

understand i

was um i felt small

against this merciless demon

for the lack of a better word anyway

while isolating i

struggled to deal with my thoughts and

emotions they were all over the place i

was depressed i was anxious

so to fix it i tried everything i mean i

tried a vigorous exercise i tried

meditation i tried rock climbing i tried

all kinds of voovoo stuff you can find

on the internet including

counselors all in an endeavor to

fix myself i even tried being nice to my

family and friends

and we know how hard that is

but the knot in my chest remained i mean

i was still anxious

i was still miserable like many in the

world

i was done with this

so one night while um scrolling away on

my phone and wasting my life i

chanced upon a notebook on my desk the

light was just perfect it was almost

like

god intended for me to see this notebook

but um

the notebook had a proposition

which said hey what if you

[Music]

write down everything that’s on your

head in your head onto a piece of paper

see what happens i mean i had journal in

the past i’ve been

journaling for about a decade here and

they’re talking about my day things i

could do right or wrong but

this was different this was

what if i document exactly how i’m

feeling what if

i put down all of my pains

my fears my hopes my worries my dreams

like a vomit

like you know how you vomit that’s an

again that’s an awful lot of

responsibility to place on one piece of

paper but i tried it

for almost 10 minutes i wrote like a

madman

like someone has gone crazy my hand hurt

my nerves hurt but i didn’t put my pen

up

i didn’t care about grammar i didn’t

care about legibility for

10 minutes i just wrote and wrote

and wrote gibberish stuff that

made

no sense

when i finally was done i kid you not

for the first time since the lockdown

had started in india

i felt centered it’s like i was at peace

it’s like the knot in my chest was gone

it’s like i

understood the term getting it off your

chest

what that means curious

i wrote every day for three months now

the benefits were obvious i could see

myself

transform into someone who is calmer

more disciplined self-aware about

his flaws and his fortunes

but it wasn’t enough i wanted to test

this hypothesis

so like many people who feel entitled

enough to share their ideas in the world

i started a youtube channel the first

video i posted

was exactly about how anyone can start

writing at any moment

again the premise was simple you don’t

need a degree in literature you don’t

need to have the last name to root you

just need an

impeccable grammar i’m kidding you don’t

need any you don’t even need that

you just need a pen and paper and if

you’re a techno if you’re technology

friendly um

any app like microsoft word or pages

that allows you to write

okay i posted the video i waited

the response till this day continues to

be overwhelming

overwhelmingly positive hundreds of

people have reached out

many have never written anything outside

of school

outside the confines of cbse icsc ib

state board whatever

many haven’t even used a pen in yours

but almost

all report clarity better mental health

and understanding of their dark side

and an overall sense of well-being

this is still anecdotal evidence still

gathered from the 11 000 people who

follow me

but i knew something about this is right

there is something in this act of

spontaneously letting yourself go on

paper not caring about

what you write but just immersing

yourself

in the act of writing allows

the kind of relief that are unconscious

that are

that our psyches have been demanding in

these incredibly important times when

we’re bombarded with stimulus constantly

nonetheless i decided to go online and

look for answers and cement my

understanding about

why free writing worked

the next few lines um come from liz

cocker author of transforming memories

whose parents were alcoholics and i

think they best describe the benefit of

free writing for someone who’s been

through a lot someone has been through

depression anxiety ptsd

and for the general public here’s how it

goes

when you write it down the weight is on

paper

not on your heart when we carry painful

memories inside

there’s a weight that can drag us down

literally or figuratively

sharing memories of shame fear

neglect or abandonment even just on a

piece of paper

can lighten your load it can lead to

all sorts of unexpected results like

allowing you to sleep

giving you perspective and understanding

and helping you

make sense of what happened in the past

my friends writing allows you to freeze

your thinking on paper

it enables the deep nuggets of wisdom

hidden deep inside your psyche to

come out and surprise you

jordan peterson has a program dedicated

entirely to the process of free writing

it’s called the self-authoring program

it’s you can pay for it it relies on the

assumption that

your irrational mind the stuff that

hides inside

knows far more about you than what your

rational will present

allowing yourself to let go on paper as

you write carefully about your past your

present and your future

allows you the sort of clarity that mere

dialogue won’t

the difficulty with dialogue the

difficulty with verbal communication is

that

we often feel like we’ve achieved a

sense of catharsis we feel like we’ve

arrived at a better understanding of who

we are when we’re speaking with someone

else when we’re dialoguing

but as famous educationist thiago forte

says you know the mind was supposed to

come up with ideas not store ideas

which is why we need papers which is why

we need google drive which is why we

need storage which is why we need

a personal history captured in notebooks

that we can look at

one thing that has happened in this

lockdown is i have filled

notebook after notebook i have free

written so many times

that i can see the transformation of my

thinking

from extremely impulsive

and reactive to

an increasing degree of calm an

increasing degree of

deeper understanding of who i am

you don’t have to publish your free

rights and believe me when you first

write

they will be horrible so publishing goes

out the window anyway

you will most likely feel how stupid it

is to you and engage in an endeavor

where you’re

writing for you know four or five pages

and hoping something magical happens but

it’s often in those moments of

resistance that you will find

once you can get past that initial hum

gems of wisdom will flow many people

report

that things that were persistently

bothering them

finally come to a resolution the one

line

among a series of gibberish will unlock

something so deep about

yourself that might be that it might be

the only thing you need

for that day or month to figure yourself

out

you see the artist julia cameron

describes in her book

the artist’s way what she says all you

have to do

as a recipe as a prescription is do four

pages of free writing

every morning the premise once again is

simple

do not put your pen up if you’re on you

know if you’re doing it on a computer do

not move your fingers up put your

fingers up

don’t care about grammar don’t care

about eligibility just allow yourself to

flow

and see what happens when we

ride something my friends we tell our

brain that this is valuable

this is important while our culture may

lose the benefit of writing may lose the

importance of writing

our governments do not governments

people in legal businesses when they

want to make something official

official they write they ask for things

in writing

it is a gift our ancestors did not have

they had to go through wars and famines

all kinds of tragedies all they had was

old histories

all they had were fragmented memories

you and i have the gift of leaving our

personal

histories behind we have the gift of

understanding ourselves on paper for

free

you don’t need to publish it you don’t

need to write a book

you just need to write to yourself

every single day compounding growth

and i promise you if you revisit this

ted talk a month from now and you’ve

done free writing

your life will have changed

that’s all for today thank you so much

and i hope you enjoyed this