I Write Therefore I Am

Recently I went to a bookstore. In my astonishment, I saw a book entitled I write Therefore I am written by Indonesian writer. This title is so fascinating, and it has riveted my desire to write something related to it by my own. I felt somewhat lacking after a month or less for the reason that I do not have enough time to write that is why, I think the title resonates me as it keeps on pooping out inside my head. 

Writing is not just a merely activity, it is a spiritual exercise, a spiritual habit that human need to cultivate more nowadays. Writing can be considered as the most important activity that shape the world. Through ''pen'', we now have the mark of each epoch and movement in history. When the modernism has began to taking place? When Descartes wrote his meditation and says that I think, therefore I am. This piece of writing is like a monument that mark the end of the Medieval age. 

Writing is not simple and shallow. Pat Schneider expresses in his work that in writing process, we are essentially alone in the presence of mystery, just like a prayer. This feeling of being alone is sacred. True, by writing we are going deeper into our imagination, memory and knowledge. We forget the world surround us and we are transported to a whole new world. We get to lost the sense of time. True writing happen when we write not because of deadline but because of enjoyment we get from it. 

Through writing, we can express ourselves better. But we do not just write, we write for an audience in mind. There is no such thing as writing for the sake of writing but for the sake of being read by someone. Even if we write for our private pleasure, there is an audience still, the writer. Therefore, it is difficult to separate between reading and writing. A great reader is a fond reader and the great reader at some point will pour out his/her experience in writing, either journal, notes or the review of the book. 

There is often a misunderstanding that people who write think that they already a writer with this false logic. I write therefore I am a writer is a wrong way of thinking. Becoming true writer is not an easy pathway for a writer is not a person who merely write but those who keep on writing frequently. They are the one who cannot live without writing or at least feel somehow missing by the ''absence of writing'' activity. Becoming a writer primarily is to walk in the whole journey of writing and rewriting. Again and again. Becoming more precise in painting the ideas into the collocation of words. 

Writing is also a process of creation, designing a new reality. Steven Heller puts out, ''Why do I write? I write therefore I am. I need the intellectual and emotional stimulation that the act of putting down ideas in the form of words on paper and screen gives me. Writing is a culmination of a process of conceiving, researching, analyzing, ordering, and structuring. Writer is like a grand design.'' In other words, by writing, we create a new universe for other people to explore. New people, new planet, new story-line. And the universe is the universe that comes out from the materials of our being and existence. 

In that new world, the notable writer can somehow bring the character so alive as if the character lives in the same world with the reader or the other-way round. Take for instance the great literature like The Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. Those kind of masterpiece teleport every reader to a whole new world, timeless and beyond the ordinary pattern of lives that bring boredom. But the best writer are those who do not just create a whole new dimension of life but somehow exposes themselves to the reader in their writing and bring us into reflection of our deepest being and existential crisis. Or as Roger Scruton describes that the writer can describe thing which have a soul of reader in it.Writer like Kafka and Bukowski are the example of that kind of writer. Pure gold and shaking our soul.

Regarding the speed of writing every writer have their own style. Umberto Eco loves to write slowly whereby writer like kazuo izhiguro or Chris Fox wrote like a flash. Which are better? Depend on which style fit the most to the writer. Either way has their own reason, strength and weaknesess. The issue not about how slow or fast but how they manage to build their ideas and themes. Without big ideas and major themes, good piece of writing is almost hard to be achieved. Most importantly, regarding writing it need to be taken seriously by everyone who desire to be a writer. One of the best advice come from Stephen King. As King says, writing ''isn't a popularity contest, it is not the moral Olympics, and it is not church. But it is writing....if you cannot or won't, its time for you to close the book and do something else. Wash the car, maybe.''

So, what are we waiting for. If we have a talent and passion for writing, why do not just write today? Trust me, we will be more alive than ever...