What sets the arts apart from other pursuits? Emotional satisfaction? Performance? Aesthetic appreciation? Sure, all of these things are important parts of art, but what truly sets apart an art is that its activity is one done for its own sake. When a painter paints, he does so because the painting is an end in itself. True art is not motivated by a desire to get rich quick or to convey some political message, but to perform a task that allows the artist to excel.
This is my approach to writing; I consider it to be an art. Yes, I do wish to write for a living, but I don’t think getting paid to produce art diminishes its artfulness. Art is something done for its own sake, regardless of any other factors. The key to creating good art is found in the intentions of the artist who creates for its own sake.
I believe that most artists have lost this nowadays. People have this idea that art is meant to be hanging in museums and art galleries so that elitists can gawk at them and feel the satisfaction that comes with being someone who looks at art. As if beauty needed to be restricted to a single building! No, beauty should be all around us. Even purely practical writing like homework or copywriting needs to have some kind of beauty to it. Even a homework assignment needs to be a work of art.
Some people have this idea that anyone can write, but nothing could be further from the truth! Too often, I find people are encouraged to get into creative writing before they have mastered the essentials: grammar, vocabulary, the rules of style, and the traditions of writing. Creative writing requires a mastery of the written word that comes only from lots of reading and rote memorizations of different words. You need a foundation and materials before you can start building. My love of reading helped me with this. Though writing a story is much harder than reading one, reading gives me ideas for what words and idioms I should use as well as what subjects I can write about.
I don’t remember when I fell in love with writing, but I remember how I came to love it. I fell in love with reading at an early age. I loved reading both fictional stories and nonfiction books. This bibliophilia only grew as I got older and discovered the Internet. Yet, I never was satisfied with simply reading what I could get my hands on. At some point, I decided that, if I couldn’t find the perfect book, I’d simply make one!
My failure to make the perfect book taught me how much discipline was required to write something. Being a writer often means staying up long nights jotting down notes and typing on my laptop. Sometimes, I’d get inspiration in the middle of the night. I felt I had to write down my ideas, else I’d lose them. Other times, there’d be a strict deadline on my work, and I’d need to write down the page within that deadline, else I wouldn’t make the grade. Either way, these late nights I spent creating works always paid off.
But I do not want to use my skills for just myself. I also love to help others express themselves in words as well, because I experience a similar feeling of accomplishment vicariously. That’s why I’ve taken up editing in addition to writing. Correcting the errors another person has written is like digging up the diamonds in the rough so that they can be shined and polished. It’s an effort to discover the author’s true voice hidden behind whatever typological and grammatical errors their piece might contain.
If there’s one area that I’d like to improve in as a writer, it would be my discipline. I find it hard to concentrate on my writing because of some of my bad habits. Whenever I run into a writer’s block, I get distracted easily. This caused no end of grief during my college days, but I have gotten better with it. This blog can attest to this. I’ve been getting better at meeting that Thursday deadline for these things, at least when I don’t have an incredibly busy week.
I love writing, and I wouldn’t give it up for the world. Give me a pencil and paper any day, and I’ll spend all day thinking, writing, and creating art.
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