Writers never write. No, they do not have ghost writers. Well, not all of them, I am sure. Neither do they have brilliant secretaries who draft their stories and bring them to him to do whatever he wishes to do with them. Not even AI is really employed by any writer unless he happens to be Ross Goodwin who published ‘The Road’.
Writers never write. Left to them, they would rather water the lawn twice or get up and prepare yet another cup of coffee. It is ideas that harness words and then pull all the right synapses to sedate the writer’s wayward impulses and push him (or her) to delegate hands along with all the fingers to go on punching letters on the keyboard until asked to pause. Some think it is the writer who is a delegation Houdini… but it is the idea that waves its wand. If left to writers, they will simply pass tasks to anyone who is willing and reappear only when it is done. In a way the writer is still doing the same as this fellow appears only to sign after a poem or a story or a page limit for the day is completed.
Writers never write. They simply ignore every innovative idea and keep mumbling to no one particular… ‘There are better ones there. Come on now, great idea. Come fast.’ Of course, ideas oblige. They are gentle beings that appear when asked to. And they disappear soon enough if they are not hooked and pulled in. Yet, there comes a time when the writer knows that there are no more time slots left to play with. This is when his procrastination panic button gets activated. The writer then does what students call ‘a whole nighter,’ inhales only adrenaline from thin air, and hopes there will not be any regrets once the finished work is sent.
Writers never write. They spend more time devising methods to help them write than get some real writing done. I know a writer who stares out of the window for fifteen minutes and spends the next fifteen writing. Another puts on a random Spotify playlist on shuffle and writes only when a good song is playing. There is another who prepares a cup of tea and then stares at it until it gets cold. Then he gets up and reheats it. By the time he had done this at least a dozen times, he is finally writing something.
Writers never write. They keep promising themselves a cookie or whatever they fancy once at least one paragraph is done. Sometimes writers browse through a few hundred Instagram reels before finally getting baited by an idea in some reel. I know one writer who spends half a day hunting for a title that he fancies and then sits down to write something that justifies that title. They are simply playing tricks on their brain as if they were training a hyperactive puppy.
The point that I am making is that writers never write. It is their writing that knows it must reach readers who need to read just that at some stage in their life and, therefore, it must be done. Does it surprise you when someone says that there are millions of yet unwritten essays, poems, and stories floating around everywhere, waiting to bait, hook, and pull-in some writer who knows he loves them but is simply keeping away.
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Arvind Passey
Written on 16 February 2025
