I struggled when it comes to writing about what I want and I still do. My struggle took another form. Expressing oneself satisfactorily is a difficult task, even harder if you try to fit your thoughts whatever their nature may be within a conventional medium. Do not understand the word struggle in a pejorative manner! What I mean by it is, conflict. A conflict between my volition and the externalized volition of others — conventions.
Interestingly enough, the first topic I engaged with in my journal was taking an awkward point of view so to think of “others” as an existential problem. It is because “I” exist, follows “others” — that aren’t I. After few pages of bleeding ink, it was clear that in my view I regarded conflict as the base of human relationships as it forges them either via confrontation or cooperation. Something to note is that even though I could’ve wrote it in a single line, I wanted to see the kind of thread sewing that thought to the rest of my beliefs.
[I don’t have problems with others nor am I asocial in any sense. It just happened that it was something I could line up words about.]
From there, I started writing about anything that comes to my mind as soon as it does. A pure reactionary process where my hand becomes an extension answering to the contractions of my inner realm. I started flooding pages with fast consecutive semi-strokes trying to keep up with my train of thoughts. There was no separation into paragraphs, just a thought calling another. It was a whole made of words and punctuation. I was attempting to chart the landscape, project the dynamical chaos into a flat, ordered and sequential format. I named it, association-oriented style, because the thoughts followed each other by association rather than by some precise logic.
I wrote in this format for a while until I reached a point where I wanted to address sophisticated ideas. So I had to find a format where I could distinguish between various components of the construction while emphasizing their relationship. It took me some time but after a while I came up with something.
Briefly described, you pick a given topic and start putting down ideas while labeling them to differentiate each idea. Then as you move, you explore the link between ideas and build on them by formulating further ideas. It is more of a research-driven process. You don’t actually care whether the ideas conflict or whether you aren’t linking the thoughts, you just put things down as they come and try to resolve whatever conceptual issue you notice on paper by referring to the conflicting ideas and formulate reconciling ones.
And again I came up with a suggestive name, inquiry-oriented style.
Will I find something beyond this? Probably. Style is known to be ever evolving.
What you notice my dear reader is that I set the rules of the games I play. My style evolves from intellectual needs that I realize from observing my own expression and resolve via expression. From there it was evident to me how speaking and writing can shape each other since both take from thinking. Thinking becomes a bridge between the two. Improving your writing will impact your speaking and vice versa. What I encourage anyone to do is “to write the way you speak”. Doing so will make you realize you own needs and come up with a way to fill the gap. So, you know …
Express it anyway.