This unseen mental labour of writing.

The scariest moment is always just before you start. - Stephen King

In our age of rapid communication and instant messaging, we often conflate writing with the mere mechanical process of typing. But reducing writing to the swift movement of fingers across keys is a misunderstanding of its profound nature.

Writing, in its truest sense, is an intellectual odyssey—a journey through the landscape of our thoughts.

Consider the writer, hunched over a desk, fingers poised above the keyboard. What we see is but the final act of a complex cognitive drama. Before a single letter is typed, entire worlds have been born and died in the mind. Ideas have clashed and merged, narratives have unfolded and collapsed, and arguments have been constructed and dismantled.

This unseen mental labour is the heart of writing.

“In short, you may actually be writing only two or three hours a day, but your mind, in one way or another, is working on it twenty-four hours a day — yes, while you sleep — but only if some sort of draft or earlier version exists. Until it exists, writing has not really begun.” -John McPhee.

In these silent moments of contemplation, we wrestle with the ineffable, attempting to give shape to the shapeless and voice to the voiceless. We grapple with the limitations of language, seeking words that can bridge the gap between our internal experiences and the external world.

The act of writing, then, is about more than just producing text. It is about clarifying our thoughts, refining our understanding, and discovering connections we never knew existed. It is a process of self-discovery as much as it is one of communication.

We would do well remembering this in a world prioritising speed and quantity over depth and quality.

The value of writing lies not in the words per minute we can type but in the richness of the thoughts we can express.

It is a reminder that writing is not just an act of the hands but an act of the mind and heart.

So, the next time we write, let us pause before we type. Let us give ourselves the gift of thought, for it is in this space that the actual writing begins.