P Kharel

LIKE an arrow flying from the bow, any word, once expressed, cannot be taken back. So goes the word of wisdom familiar in this region since time immemorial. Words carry the power to encourage/discourage someone, soothe ruffled feelings, warn, teach, share and the whole range of action. They represent an outlet for one’s feelings, moods, quest and pursuits. Stir the cup of big issues and spur fresh debates.
Words will wow, weary and wound people — or simply bore them. They do many things to many people simultaneously or at different periods of times. The right words in the right place and on the right occasion can deliver to the receiver what the drive behind the deliverer wants to impress upon. Committing such contents to writing involves concentrated attention and perhaps an impression in individual solitude without being distracted (or noised) by the burden of having to listen to and participate in the form of discussion.
Work in words also weaves it way to recalling vibrant voices from the past, often ignored or overlooked. A writer can dig the past and give a perspective to it in the present context. I make a living by reporting and interpreting events basically through written words, barring occasional interviews of the oral type.

Watch your words
Writing is an act of airing ideas and opinions. Even scribbling can be a liberating exercise — an engagement that channels individual thought committed to a form of concrete communication symbols and meanings contained in words whose wings expand them to sentences, paragraphs and full scale narratives of various genres.
Putting pen to paper is often an exacting engagement. The American war time correspondent Ernest Hemingway is reported to have rewritten the end of the war novel A Farewell to Arms 39 times, underscoring the labour scribes put into their work. Some souls, who had occupied big chairs and fat privileges, cringe or pretend being too busy for such stint. A few commission their trusted acquaintances to pen down their thoughts in a book shape containing memoirs. To novelist Kate Weinberg, who was struggling to plot a story, John le Carre advised her: “You need to remember this. ‘The cat sat on the mat. That’s not a story. But the cat sat on the dog’s mat. That’s a story.”
An individual scribe proceeds to shape a content together with its ideas, flow, characterisation, narrative, environment, setting, assemblage, arrangement of the same and the style of the overall narrative, tone and sentence construction. The pace and progress depends on the thought process, clarity and power of imagination for results. No one is a born writer, even if some might be more gifted than do others. Some think quick and develop a style that draws readers quick to their word-filled pages.
Another aspect in book writing entails comprehensive thinking, research and plenty of rewriting and fresh interpretations and frequently dawn-to-dusk revisions. The routine is different for different individuals. Of writing process, thriller masters Frederick Forsyth in English language, records in a memoir: “A writer lives half his life inside his own head. Writing is the only job that has to be undertaken wholly alone... In this tiny space, entire words are created or erased or probably both.”
An analyst has to exercise a degree of detached distance for clearer picture free from biases. Information retold in easy to understand, straightforward language is the most followed style in mass news media, particularly the broadcast brand. This means tight editing to ensure easily understandable read. Author Gore Vidal, a noted American author focusing historical novels, held the view: A writer must always tell the truth as he sees it while a politician must never give the game away.
When I joined The Rising Nepal in 1973, the newsroom was a live hive of noise, chatter, consultations, phone conversations and clattering of typewriters. Office help would come in and go out, for tea supply, tear outs from the tele-printers, or the tickers that churned out news in yards and yards of double-ply white rolled papers. Every next hour, the floor would be cleared of the little mounds of tele-printed papers discarded by the News Desk.
AP, AFP and Xinhua were the agencies whose tele-printers, installed next to the Newsroom, would feed information from all corners of the world round-the-clock. The first copy would be for The Rising Nepal and the carbon copy reserved for Gorkhapatra that would either translate some news or rely on the translated version from the national news agency, RSS.
Writing is sharing ideas, observations and experiences. It includes setting the scene to grab the readers’ attention, interesting characters, use of diction and style of presentation topped by the narrative’s theme. The task is to think new and invent an approach that serves a story better. In the case of a news story, a clear, straightforward and breezy style constitutes a general rule. Particularly the beginning should sound inviting. The remaining but bigger portion should not break the promise and let the readers down.
A common aspect of scribing any genre and format of narrative should shed any inhibition and lethargy to rewrite and edit.
In the days of the yore, orality was a matter of compulsion and long held practice. When alphabets were crafted, expanded and popularised, the oral tradition was the most widely practised form of communication for preserving knowledge and skills as sources of reference. Vedas continued with mass chanting for reinforcing the sanctity of accuracy so much so that people (pundits) were reluctant to commit the mantras to the permanence of written form.

Call for creativity
In the 21st century, it is widely agreed that writing energises the brain, mines the imagination and fuels the quest for creativity offering the sweet success satisfaction. Insight gives weight, and the detail expands the room for a style that paves way for liberal leeway to creating an appropriate atmosphere. Taste for the creative enterprise is an immense asset.
Being innovative and inventive in this sphere means toiling with care for a satisfying end-result. Unfolding complex issues in a simple, understandable and breezy style is but one of the approaches to writing. Parochial writers and self-centred authors put most people off. Prejudices stink while logical arguments reinforced by facts might merit a read even if one might not necessarily agree with the author’s core ideas. Wasted words and unlearnt lessons loom large as lost chances to communicate effectively. With words let loose, their message is reduced to mere noise.
If one enjoys word cultivation, the exercise becomes strenuous. As a scribe, the deadline-demanding assignment keeps me tightly on my toes the most even nearly five decades of regular writing in more than a dozen news outlets — print and broadcast — without ever missing the appointed date.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)