Hello, and welcome to my writing blog! This post is an introduction to myself, your humble host, and to what this blog is going to be all about.
Self-portrait? I also enjoy drawing (mostly ink doodles and digital art), and thought it would be fun to use old works or create new ones to illustrate these blog posts!
I'm Jomel (@jimperio), and l've been an avid reader and aspiring writer most of my life. I love science fiction and fantasy, which were the mainstays of my escapist childhood reading. Later on, I developed a liking for literary fiction, and great admiration for authors like Jose Saramago, Haruki Murakami, David Foster Wallace, Nicholson Baker. I also have grown to enjoy poetry, creative nonfiction — especially on science, culture, and history — and most recently philosophy, which I’m now studying beginning with reading the classics.
Rediscovering creativity
My writing aspirations remained dormant until a few months ago, when our government's tragically inept handling of the pandemic forced my wife and I to stay isolated at home. This unprecedented change was a huge struggle, but as all of us have had to, we gradually adjusted to this new normal.
One of the biggest sources of energy that kept us sane and helped us get through the worst of the COVID-19 blues was rediscovering and reconnecting with our creativity.
My wife had started her own creative journey in art last year, taking watercolor and drawing classes at a local art studio. Joining her for drawing classes and interacting with professional artists sparked my own creativity and rekindled my sense of wonder, which I didn't realize had gotten dulled by daily life, and quite a pragmatic career in making software.
Eventually, my long-frustrated ambitions turned my creative energies back to writing.
On Writing Well, a no-nonsense and spirited manifesto on clarity as fundamental to good writing, inspired me back into action. It demystified writing for me, presenting it as a craft, a vocation, and simple hard work. The key takeaway for me can be summed up in one sentence:
Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can't exist without the other.
Since reading the book, I've continued to strive for this clarity and demand it of myself, knowing that I can only attain it with steady, conscious effort.
I had also long believed Ira Glass when he said that we just have to do a lot of work to bridge the gap between our taste and our skill:
It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
Thus I embarked just a few months ago on this latest and most serious writing journey to date.
First steps of the journey
I began writing again in the form I was most familiar with, private journalling. In these "morning pages", inspired by Writing Down the Bones, I aimed to get my thoughts flowing again, and to express them clearly and simply in words. This practice was enough for a few months, and I've so far been able to increase my daily output to 1000 words.
But I knew I had to write not only for myself, but for others. I tiptoed outside my journal and started to share my thoughts, write publicly, and join conversations on Twitter. It's a great place for research and intellectual stimulation, for exploring ideas and learning various new things, and for a unique and enjoyable form of self-expression.
Still, I felt that I had to be doing actual work, and the occasional short musing or comment doesn't quite accumulate or add up to actual "work" for me. Like journalling and morning pages, tweeting feels more like a preparatory or complementary practice to actual writing.
So, how do I get myself to do "actual work", then?
Answering necessary questions
I know that I want to write clearly, simply, and well, but I realized that I still had some fundamental questions to answer for myself: what exactly do I want to write, and what do I want to achieve with my writing?
To answer these, I drafted the following manifesto, a personal vision to guide me on my writing journey. I found this to be a useful and inspiring exercise, and wholeheartedly recommend it to any aspiring creative in need, like I was, of some clarity and direction.
My writing manifesto
I want to write essays that are clear and easy to follow, warmly but not awkwardly personal, and put ideas and well-observed details together in new and thought-provoking ways.
I want to write imaginative stories set in fascinating and impossible worlds, exploring new ways of seeing and being, yet still relevant to us "normal humans" — timeless and meaningful, emotionally and intellectually.
I want to write poetry that lingers in the mind, that astonishes and clears up some small bit of fog in the universe, that paints a small but beautiful picture.
And in any and all of these forms, I would like my writing to be clear and honest, to be an accurate representation of my self, to be bold and imaginative.
Even just writing this initial rough draft has helped immensely, and this manifesto has guided me all throughout the process of writing this first blog post.
Principles to blog by
So now we come to this blog in particular. In this final part of this introductory post, I'd like to share some principles that I'll be blogging by, to give you a better idea of what kind of posts you can expect.
Work with the garage door up
This blog is an experiment in learning in public, and working with the garage door up, to steal Andy Matuschak's stolen phrase. In this blog, I will be thinking out loud, sharing small lessons and insights as I uncover them myself, as well as various glimpses into my personal process of learning and working.
As in this post itself, where I've tried to share what has worked for me so far, my writing manifesto above, and these principles I'll be using as a guide in creating future posts.
Aim first for clarity and simplicity
I can't repeat this enough: I believe that clarity and simplicity are non-negotiable qualities of good writing. Otherwise, the writer is just being disrespectful of the reader's time and effort.
From Writing to Learn, another good book by William Zinsser:
Somehow it never occurs to sloppy writers that they are being fundamentally rude.
In this and all future posts, I vow to be as clear and as simple as possible.
Consistency and pragmatism
This blog is a commitment to writing regularly and consistently well, on useful and interesting topics. I will also be honest about what works for me and what doesn't — and the writing itself, I hope, will sufficiently demonstrate my successes, failures, and progress.
This having been said, there is such a thing as taking oneself too seriously, and one last crucial principle is...
Have fun, be interesting!
If I'm not having fun writing these posts, then you as the reader won't have any fun either! If I don't put in the work to make my own writing interesting to myself, then why would anybody else find it interesting?
As Robert Frost said:
No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.
Not merely pragmatic usefulness, then, but also playfulness, joy, and wonder.
Future posts
I will be publishing a post weekly to start off, and sharing various small glimpses into how I'm learning to read and write better:
Book summaries, reviews, and read-throughs (e.g., How to Read a Book, On Writing Well, Story of Philosophy, The Culture series etc.).
Small essays (like this one) on lessons learned and insights gained into various aspects of writing and reading.
Snippets of original fiction, poetry, and perhaps other more playful forms of writing.
Thanks for reading this first introductory post, and I hope you’ll enjoy coming along for the rest of the journey!