Writing As Offshoring

“Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”

Stephen King

If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered. 

Stephen King

One of the fundamental premises in writing is clarity. Some might be the reduction of passive sentences (whoops!), or breaking general principles as deemed fit by the writer (hurrah!). Writing is an art because it is an expression of human consciousness.

Consciousness is forever a black box because the innards can be correlated, the behaviours observed, the physiology measured, the conversations had, but the qualities of consciousness in a subjectivity remain unknown to another. First-experiential knowledge of a subject in the object universe is the ultimate barrier between souls.

Same substrates in the largest object known, the universe, separated into two flames of subjectivity, or more. The art of writing has this as its foundation without any acknowledgement of it. Where, in some sense, a question is posed, even without a question mark.

An answer is given when a reader takes hold of the wording and makes something for themselves out of it. Generally, writing is a solitary act in recognition of others. Other subjectivities wandering the landscape of the object universe.

“?”

“.”

“?”

“!”

“?”

“…”

That’s the discourse of writing behind the words or something like it. For earlier writers, writing, or typing in the modern period, is a huge pain in the behind, the backside. It’s tedious, seemingly unnecessary. But they do it anyway. The structure of a sentence. The decorum of grammar, the frame of syntax, and the content of suitable word choice and correct ordering of words.

Over time, these become automated for writers. They feedback into deeper structures of the mind for the automaticity of structure and content, where intent drives it, now. An emotion, for example, can be a driver. When writing for a wedding magazine, there is writing from an emotion felt in the chest, oriented to a higher-order abstract principle, which gets integrated together as the writing unfolds.

Until, it feels right, intuitively. Intuition plays a large role in writing, after enough writing. How much? A sufficient amount for the person, which adds nothing to the descriptor. But it’s really that way. You have to write, and write, and read, and read, and write, and read, constantly.  Over time, intuition may play the only role.

You must not develop the skills, alone, but the actual structures for thinking as a writer. Writing adapts a core feature of human capacity, so identity: language. Acts of writing are speech acts formalized. The process of continual refinement, of endurance of the mind, and renewed breakthroughs into genuine self-expression.

The formalities have been dealt with, automated, and then intent guides the entirety of the process. This can be considered capital “O” Offshoring. You offshore the lower-level basics to the non-conscious, but more active, parts of the mind. Then you can focus on vetting of ideas your mind throws at you, and the putting of emotion and true self to page.

Your own subjectivity poses another perennial question.