The Writer's Life: Why Writers See the World Differently

 

An idea crossed my mind.

Writers often move through life with a slightly different perspective from everyone else. It is not necessarily something that the writer chooses. In many cases, it simply happens over time. The more a person writes, the more they begin to observe the world in a way that others might overlook.

And I asked myself the question, ‘Why?’

I am a latecomer to the world of writing. Five years ago, writing was just something that I did when I had to. Social media, blogs, and bulletin boards were not something that had taken over my life. I did occasionally write a post here or there, but I felt that I had better things to do with my time. As a form of writing, though, it was all very fleeting and in the moment.

And then I wrote a book, Son of My Father.

I wrote it because after the death of my mother, I went through the experience of thinking about the past. Memories and stories started to fill my mind in a way they hadn’t before. Then I had a thought. I decided to write about them.

From that moment I was hooked on writing more. 

I came to think that writing about life changes the way we observe it. A writer does not just experience events; we notice them. Even small details become important. Watching how someone pauses before answering a question, or noticing the exact phrase used in a conversation and the tone behind it. Being aware of the language used, the mood in the room, and how people react. It doesn’t have to be dramatic, but it carries meaning.

The Writer's Life: Life After Medium and Writing Short Books

It has been around six months since I left Medium (you can find out why in this six part series — The Truth About Medium).

I no longer post on Medium as much as I once did. Most of the time, I will import a post from this blog, to keep things going, and see if anyone reads it.

That was one of the difficulties at Medium: finding the audience and getting reads. It is a site that does all the SEO stuff for you. If it did, I’m not sure that it helped in any way. It sounds like a good idea, just post and trust the algorithm to find readers for you, but I can’t say it worked well for me.

I tend to do my own SEO and keywords on this blog, with a little help from ChatGPT. AI is useful in that regard. In fact, I would say that I get a better response doing this myself on my own blog than I did relying on Medium's algorithm.

The Writer's Life: When Illness Strikes - The Art and Fear of Being a Writer

 

I recently caught a winter cold, which turned into an infection,  or it came with it, just before Christmas. It was just a cold, or so I thought.

The common cold had taken a backseat in recent times, as COVID-19 got all the headlines. But it has been around a long time; there are about two hundred strains of it. It was just waiting its turn, or a new strain was around. Old or new, I got it from somewhere.

And it was a lingering cold.

A continuous cough is not just something that comes with COVID-19; mine from this simple cold lasted three weeks, and I’m still not over it. The cough pounds away at the rib cage — it’s like going ten rounds with Mike Tyson at his peak.

It all meant that I struggled to write. That’s the way it is when I’m ill. I might have good intentions, that having all that time,  I will write. In reality, that doesn’t happen. Being ill drains any desire to do anything, other than to get over it.

You eat a meal without tasting a bite. You read a message twice and still don’t absorb it. Watch a YouTube video, without taking it in. Somewhere along the way, you forget to write. The hours drag on.

And this is where writing lives.

To be a writer is to exist half a step removed from the world, constantly translating experience into language in a way that, hopefully, someone will like and understand. The writer is always watching, listening, and storing fragments away in the mind for future use. Even in moments of rest, or illness, thoughts are working, shaping sentences, rehearsing conversations, rewriting endings that never happened.

This is the art of it.