Exploring Communications

I have been inspired to write again… feeling very slack for not having posted in such a long time… but inspired by a fellow writer who has quite an amazing blog about a year of self discovery, tasking herself with learning a new thing every day. Check it out – Giving Back Girl.

My biggest take from Lisa’s blog is her passion for writing, much like when you see a painting on a wall that is just bursting with life, even though it’s just a 2D image. So, how do you get that passion, where do you find that voice? I am not really sure I know how to answer that question. I find that if I am writing for work regarding business matters, there is still the need for passion or light and dark, and perhaps finding that is harder than if you were writing about personal experience. Partly, I think it’s about immersing yourself in the scene as it were. Putting yourself on your canvas and looking out at the readers, and seeing what their expression would show. Comprehension, disbelief, confusion, kinship… So by essentially turning yourself into the words  you force yourself to understand far more intimately who you’re writing for. If it’s yourself or people who follow a similar life to you, a lot easier. If I am writing for a bunch of Chief Technology Officers or business leaders it’s quite a different kettle of fish. But the key is understanding their language before you start.

The passion I have for writing is that to me words are a living entity and it’s how you put them together that delivers a meaning… but also how the reader interprets those words. I’ve just read a wonderful book about painters called The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova (who also wrote The Historian and one of my all time favourite novels). Through her characters and exquisite writing she is able to help the reader understand what a painting with its own life is all about.  Subsequently I had the pleasure of attending a ‘private’ viewing of the Archibold Prize at the NSW Art Gallery. When looking at the paintings I was able to feel the soul and the passion of some of the paintings. Whilst the feelings I experienced might not have been exactly what the painter felt, probably quite different, yet I was still moved by the experience. This is what I think a good piece of writing should always endeavour to do; evoke a feeling or passion for the reader… to give them a new life experience. Hopefully, when that inner novel inside me is able to pop out that I too evoke that level of passion and that I help others experience something new and amazing. I just have to figure out how to get it out… and then I will share.