What does it take to finish writing an essay so it can finally be submitted for editing and publication? One work hazard of always editing while writing is the tendency to overthink the text and obsess over style, structure, and language. Nothing is ever finished when writing becomes too technical.
Writing requires a place to sit down and ruminate. My ruminations happen on the road as I commute, or as I wait for a cab, or as I ride the metro train and back. I hurry to get to school early so I can sit idly or watch a movie on my phone or read an e-book before my classes start. When I’m done teaching and am finally back home, I force myself to do nothing. So when do I actually write?
To finish writing an essay is to arrest crafting
I’d like to think that I am always writing. To finish writing an essay, I must decide to stop writing. I have to suspend crafting scenes in my mind or imagining more struggles for the living. I have to finalize the conversations for characters on the road. The more I gaze at an interesting person to sketch their profile in my head, the more I desire to describe an atmosphere through a setting that I dream.
Writing to finish that essay in my random encounters when commuting means closing my eyes to sleep and rest. This is a time to stop calculating the scenes I am witnessing while standing on commute in an overcrowded train. When abrasive creatures get impatient and spit invectives, I am on my last crafting stage.
My imagination gets curbed amidst bad breaths and infectious coughs. In the overcrowded train, this is the moment to pitch the best word to place the period on this essay. If I go back to the start of my ruminations, I will loose my way, start again and end up nowhere. To finish writing that essay, my mind should stop crafting, nulling all artifice.
To finish writing an essay is to don the editors hat
Editing means blowing away all the hubris of authorship. The essay becomes a manuscript for analysis. Editing takes the reader Other into consideration and makes sure that there will be clear communication. For this heroic act, first, I have to put the finished essay aside, forget about it, go home and then sleep.
After a day, week or two of forgetting the essay that I finished writing, my editor’s hat becomes available for use. Editing happens in a coffee shop. This writer turned editor will assume a stance similar to that of a refugee attempting to cross the border to a peaceful territory.
At home on a Saturday afternoon I escape the toddler-versus-mother wars that begin at the time of my sister’s feeding her son at breakfast and doesn’t let up until the child is exhausted at play. Outside, I seek a coffee shop and ask the waiters to turn the music down. In a public space, I feel entitled and insist on a quieter atmosphere. Then and only then will I be able to gauge the quality of my finished essay.
To finish writing an essay is to hug my nomadic lifestyle
I’m always on the move, alone. Moving alone is the character of my ordinary life which has made it extraordinary. Carefully noting the ordinary places I’ve been, I behold meaning in ordinary spaces, blank or empty, crowded or noisy.
The nomadic state isn’t suited to endings. To finish something in an itinerant lifestyle means to allow oneself to pause and breathe long. To finish writing an essay is to fix oneself in a quiet and personal space, to settle down for a bit. Like a nomad, every sublime and moral spirit, every mundane and errant thought is merely passing by. So to be continued will be the permanent state of the one lingering in time. To finish writing an essay is to embrace the arbitrary, illogical and non-linear beginnings, middles, and ends.
