Curated Writings: On writing sentences

From the little I have written on the Web, I can relate to a writer's travails. The excruciating pains of labour in constructing a sentence that stammers to sound right. The inconsolable pain at staring the blank white screen endlessly. Vikram Chandra, in his part non-fiction, part memoir, "Mirrored Mind", captures the essence beautifully.   


"Writing sentences felt like construction, and, also, simultaneously, a steady, slow excavation. You put each word in place, brick upon brick, with a shimmery sense of what the whole edifice would look like, the shape of the final thing. But each phrase was also a digging inward, an uncovering. You tunneled, dug, dug, On good days, you emerged from your labours tired but happy. On bad days you were left quivery, stupefied. There was risk and danger involved in this work. You always got strung out, ground down, strained thin. Ended up a little sad, maybe a little mad. Not a way to spend life."