In the innermost sanctum of my heart, there lies only one thing I absolutely care about when writing. It is one sentence leading to another sentence. I am unable to think of my writing except as a series of sentences connected to each other to convey a human interest matter that has stolen my heart at that moment. But to get there, I hardly rely on some grueling routine or any fancy habit or any specialized skill. Instead, I rely on tiny, invisible prompts - classical music, nature, philosophy, or a lyric - that quietly turn a daily rhythm into the discipline of writing, typically every day.
My act of writing is always interspersed with reading so that the two become mutually reinforcing. I do the writing in long hand, by pencil, in a physical notebook, and thereafter, I transcribe it onto a personal digital device. This writing, and its continuous editing and review, are all really a yearslong quest for refinement with a desire that its fusion of imagination, creation and construction can bear the weight of time, lucidity, and public scrutiny. But, this is still an unglamorous, silent, and inefficient writing habit, really an ordinary man’s baseline of craftsmanship. Of course, it is also just one way of expressing oneself in one creative format. Obviously, there are several other ways other creative individuals employ to express their craft.
