The biggest challenge for all of us, certainly for those of us who are ‘writers’, is to keep things fresh. It’s very easy to get stuck in a rut. Inevitably as time passes you find yourself having to face a writing challenge that’s similar to one you’ve faced before. Our reaction can be one of comfort, perhaps complacency – oh good, I know what to do. Or it can be boredom – oh damn, I know what to do and now I’ve got to do it again. But do you? Could you find a different approach?
We have to keep seeking refreshment as writers. By that I don’t mean the long liquid lunch down the pub. We have to keep challenging ourselves to try different things. I found 26 ways of looking at a blackberry a refreshing book to write because it challenged me and made me think differently about ways to approach business writing in particular.
One of the ways to seek such refreshment is by going to a different place. If you work in an office, go outside the office to write. If you’ve done weeks and months of work, go away somewhere to stimulate your mind, not just to get a suntan. In this year of the ‘staycation’ perhaps there’s a danger that we fail to go away and get the mental refreshment that we need.
I’m off next week to Spain to run my next Dark Angels course in Andalucia with Stuart and Jamie. There will be a dozen of us there, all trying different ways of writing to refresh our business writing. The complete change of scenery helps, and it’s a particularly beautiful part of the world. But the introduction of another language and culture helps too. It’s not that we write in Spanish but inevitably you hear Spanish and you become absorbed into aspects of Spanish culture. This has a stimulating effect on your writing.
I experienced this, without leaving the country, when I was exploring a poem in Spanish for my contribution to 26 Exchanges. There I was finding my way around a poem written by the Bolivian writer Edwin Gomez (who writes originally in Aymara, an Andean language, but who translated his poem into Spanish). My Spanish is rudimentary but there is something joyful in the journey to discover meaning in another language. Finding the meaning of individual words is easy, but really putting yourself in the mind of another writer to uncover deeper levels of meaning is more difficult. But a wonderful experience.
So I’m brushing up my Spanish a bit. And looking forward to being in Spain again. But before then the 26 Exchanges exhibition will open on Monday 21st September at the Royal Academy of Engineering. Try to get along to see it. I think you’ll find it refreshing.
