I have always found it hard to write on the blog. I find business writing and communication so much easier. I attribute this to lack of practice. I have never written anything, just for the fun of it. The other issue that I have with writing a blogpost, is not being sure who the audience is. It’s like standing on the stage giving a talk, in front of complete darkness. You are not sure who the audience is. Well, you do know there are family and friends among them, but they more or less know about your views. The darkness could work for someone who has stage fright ( I am not sure of this), but as a speaker I would love to see my audience reaction when I speak. For me, the person on the stage derives his energy from the reaction of the audience. Whether it’s a public speaker, performer, artist doesn’t really matter.
Now comes the next interesting aspect, your audience gets generated over a period of time. It’s like you start performing and the audience slowly starts building up depending on the quality of performance, which would then encourage you to perform better. So it’s an interesting chicken-and-egg kind of situation. A person like me needs to understand the audience to be able to act and react, but the audience will come in only over a period of time. The only way to get out of this is to keep writing for the love of it. And according to some of my friends who are prolific bloggers, apparently this is some sort of an acquired taste. You initially you keep pushing yourself to write, you are not satisfied by your initial work, but you keep writing, and in the end you find you can’t stop it.
I am pretty sure that to start on the path of being a good writer, one has to start writing and keep writing. But how does one write without knowing the audience? For e.g. I love math and music, and love the fact that there are commonalities between the two, which one starts learning when he dives in deeper into the two oceans. But what do I write about? Do I write about what differentiates music from noise, and derive some sort of an analogy to mathematical functions? Do I talk about intonation and number theory? Or do I talk about the various genres about music and how could we try and represent them mathematically? Or do I compare western classical to Carnatic, and do an analogous comparison of the mathematical styles of the two regions? Or do I talk about the wonderful music of Mozart and the soc-called “Mozart effect” ( or maybe a “Subbulakshmi effect” and the south Indian tradition of teaching carnatic music to kids)? Or could there be a Beethoven algorithm? Or the psychological comparison many have drawn between math and music? The fact is there is so much to talk about and share in just one topic, and the a possibilities start flooding one’s mind before even starting to write on the topic. The solution to this could be to take a small topic and write on it first, but I find it very difficult without understanding the audience (and their existing knowledge & interest on the topic).
So, dear reader, I am in a dilemma. My blogging muscle is pretty weak, and I need constant practice to strengthen this muscle. The good thing is my reading muscle is much better, and could aid in the process. So I have thought of an unique challenge to solve the problem. Read 52 books in the next 52 weeks over the year, and express my thoughts on each book. The audience would be the “future Karthik”. The idea is pretty simple, anyone who has read the awesome “Calvin and Hobbes” in their early teens, late teens and twenties, would have related to the book in a different manner, and would have had different thoughts on it. While growing up I though socialism was a great idea, when I went to college and learnt the economic theories, I realized the flaws in the socialistic way of doing things. Getting into real life, I realized the issues with capitalism (or rather the way it’s being practiced) and the economic theories that support capitalism (or rather the flawed economic policies of capitalistic countries). This led to a deeper understanding that economics is an evolving area, without a straight right or wrong.
Anyways let’s get back to the books, even though non-fiction would be preferred, I want to start reading fiction as well. The books have to be across topics. So here’s the list of some books that I would love to read in the next one year:
- Surely You’re Joking, Mr.Feynman! – Richard Feynman
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
- The Stranger – Albert Camus
- 1984 – George Orwell
- Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
- GEB ( Godel, Escher, Bach ) – Douglas Hofstadter
- A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson
- A History of Mathematics – Carl Boyer
- A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking
- The Elegant Universe – Brian Greene
- Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
- East of Eden – John Steinbeck
- Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse
- The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins
- The Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
- Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
- The Catcher in the Rye – J.D.Salinger
- Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts
- The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy) – J.R.R. Tolkien
That makes it 22! I would love to read some of the Hindi Classics as well, especially the ones by Munshi Premchand
23. Gaban
24. Godaan
25. Vardaan
26. His awesome short stories – I am sure there will be a book which contains some of the popular short stories written by Premchand
I guess the above list would be a good starting point. I can keep adding to the list, whenever I get a good recommendation ( Foundation series by Isaac Asimov?) .
That would be the end of an annoyingly long post, thanks for reading. Yes Mr. Feynman, I will be right there…
