Short Note on Writing

Of the 4363 previous posts I’ve written here, a few have no connection to clean energy or sustainability at all—and this one is an example.  Occasionally I like to communicate something on the subject of writing itself, not that I believe I’m any good at it, but rather that I spend a good deal of time doing it, and so I’m more tuned into it than the average person.

Novelist and travel writer Pico Iyer said:  The less conscious one is of being ‘a writer,’ the better the writing. Writing should … be as spontaneous and urgent as a letter to a lover, or a message to a friend who has just lost a parent … writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.

That speaks to me in a big way.  It’s rather like acting, I suppose, in that excellence means going unnoticed.

This is really the same concept that W. H. Auden made in this earlier piece, i.e., that writers need to find their “voice” and let everything they write come from that place.

Here’s Iyer’s TED talk that shows his profound humanity, while he shares his charming insights on what matters in life.  Enjoy.