Knapsack Issue 04: The Answers to the Writing Exercise Edition

Welcome to Knapsack 👋

Hello readers,

You’re reading the fourth issue of Knapsack. There was an exercise in the last issue that sought to unleash a smidgen of creative juices. This edition is lightweight compared to other issues. That’s because I wanted to give space to contributions from readers. I also describe how I went about with writing my sample.

Oh, I’ve added a new logo for the newsletter. I’ll explain how to create a logo using Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) in an upcoming issue.

If you find any of the sections useful, share it with others and on social media. As always, I would like to get some feedback on this experiment. 🙂

Thanks,
Xavier

Previous Editions

• #3: The Writing Exercise Edition
• #2: The Liftoff Edition
• #1: Into the Unknown Edition

Book Bites: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamont

To become a better writer, you have to write more. It pretty much always works this way: you have to write to figure out what you’re writing about.

Write shitty first drafts. Don’t judge your initial work too harshly because every writer has terrible first drafts. Writing reveals itself through writing. As you write, you uncover the hidden gems inside you that you didn’t even know were there. Words come to you, characters reveal themselves, and dialogue forms that shows who these people are. Ask people around you to help you with your writing. Call on them for their expertise. If you want to write about gardening or include a garden in your writing, but you don’t know the first thing about gardening, then ask someone who does. Enlist the help of others to make your words come alive.

Quotable Quote

“No piece of information is superior to any other. Power lies in having them all on file and then finding the connections. There are always connections; you have only to want to find them.” - Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

This quote has been a guiding principle for me over the years. Sometimes people often ask me how I come up with ideas. This is how.

I’ve been applying this quote to discover new connections or rediscover old ones.

This quote also forms the core idea for my personal knowledge management philosophy which I will go over in future issues.

Answers to the Write Away Exercise

In the last issue, I had asked readers to try writing a sentence by taking a simple sentence and then build up a complex sentence paragraph. The idea behind this exercise is to practice how to convey information by constructing complex sentences. It is easy to write simple sentences. But if you want to become better writers, it is helpful to learn to convey more in a sentence without losing the core theme of the sentence.

Some of you had volunteered and have attempted this exercise 🙏. I’ve included them after this section.

Some had asked me how to do it. So here is an example of building a sentence from an initial short and simple one.

An incremental writing attempt

We start with:

I saw a bird.

Then we add a bit of additional information:

I can still recall the exact moment when I saw that bird.

Adding some information about time again:

I can still recall the exact moment when I saw that bird I’ve been searching for the past couple of weeks.

Let’s add a location:

I can still recall the exact moment when I saw that bird I’ve been searching for the past couple of weeks in this damp rainforest.

Adding a bit more detail about the location:

I can still recall the exact moment when I saw that bird I’ve been searching for the past couple of weeks in this damp rainforest enduring mosquitos the size of cockroaches and leeches who would put Count Dracula’s kin to shame.

Adding a bit of monologue about daily life’s affordances:

I can still recall the exact moment when I saw that bird I’ve been searching for the past couple of weeks in this damp rainforest enduring mosquitos the size of cockroaches and leeches who would put Count Dracula’s kin to shame surviving without the those basic amenties of modern human life - coffee and cheeseburgers.

Moving to a description of the bird:

I can still recall the exact moment when I saw a flash of bright electric blue and yellowish-orange that marked the plumage of that elusive bird for which I (and several other people) have been searching futilely for these past couple of weeks in this damp rainforest enduring mosquitos the size of cockroaches and leeches who would put Count Dracula’s kin to shame surviving without the those two basic amenties of modern human life: coffee and cheeseburgers.

Adding some more descriptive info about the location

I can still recall the exact moment when I saw, in a copse of straggly trees, a flash of bright electric blue and yellowish-orange that marked the plumage of that elusive bird for which I (and several other people) have been searching furtively and futilely these past couple of weeks in this damp rainforest, enduring mosquitos the size of cockroaches and leeches who would put Count Dracula’s kin to shame surviving without the those two basic amenties of modern human life: coffee and cheeseburgers.

And some more information incrementally:

I can still recall the exact moment and what I was doing – struggling to tie my shoelaces with one hand while balancing on a small log – when I first saw, among a copse of straggly trees, a flash of bright electric blue and yellowish-orange that marked the plumage of that bird – that elusive bird for which I (and several other people) have been searching furtively and futilely (for that huge prize money that may alleviate my current condition) these past couple of weeks in this damp rainforest, enduring mosquitos the size of cockroaches and leeches who would put Count Dracula’s kin to shame surviving without the those two basic amenties of modern human life: coffee and cheeseburgers – that bird that might mark my return to civilisation, fame, and riches.

I can still recall the exact moment and what I was doing – struggling to tie my shoelaces with one hand while balancing on a small log that served as a bridge not across troubled waters but across a small meandering stream of clear water whose surface was marred by the floating branches and dead leaves – when I first saw, among a copse of straggly trees, a flash of bright electric blue and yellowish-orange that marked the plumage of that bird – that elusive bird for which I (and several other people) have been searching furtively and futilely (for that huge prize money that may alleviate my current condition) these past couple of weeks in this damp rainforest, enduring mosquitos the size of cockroaches and leeches who would put Count Dracula’s kin to shame surviving without the those two basic amenties of modern human life: coffee and cheeseburgers – that bird that might mark my return to civilisation, fame, and riches.

Till we end up with a 192-word sentence. It is hard to parse but the idea is to write a proper sentence that conveys something.

I can still recall the exact moment (it was twelve minutes past six in the morning) and what I was doing – struggling to tie my shoelaces with one hand while balancing on a small log that served as a bridge not across troubled waters but across a small meandering stream of clear water whose surface was marred by the floating branches and dead leaves – when I first saw, among a copse of straggly trees, a flash of bright electric blue and yellowish-orange that marked the plumage of that bird – that elusive bird for which I (and several other people) have been searching furtively and futilely (for that huge prize money that may alleviate my current condition) these past couple of weeks in this damp rainforest, enduring mosquitos the size of cockroaches and leeches who would put Count Dracula’s kin to shame surviving without the those two basic amenties of modern human life: coffee and cheeseburgers – that lovely bird which might mark my return to civilisation, fame, and riches if I managed to capture its image in this expensive piece of equipment that has already eaten away whatever I had earned so far.

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Submissions to the Write Away Exercise

Hemapriya

Her initial sentence was :

Hema started working out.

She then bumped it up to this:

Nearly after three months of hectic schedule, and after realising that her dresses doesn’t fit her anymore, Hema started working out_.

and then to:

After three months of erratic schedule that demanded being glued to the laptop round the clock, that left no time even for any basic self-care such as applying a coat of moisturizer to the feet that was already scaled like a crocodile, Hema finally started working out, realizing what damage she had done to her health when her neck hurt and how cumbersome her home office setup contributed to her poor sitting posture.

and ended up with an 89-word sentence 👍:

Hema, who is usually active and health-conscious, had no time to spare few minutes for any self-care, even the basic ones, including applying moisturizer to the feet, which was already scaled like a crocodile back was so frustrated thinking how long this hectic schedule would continue and which was not giving a feeling of accomplishment realized that it was not worth the while and wanted to do something to be back on her feet and started working out to fix the hurting neck at the end of each day.

Gayathri Jaishankar

Gayathri went from:

I drink tea

to a 202-word sentence 👏:

My mornings are supposed to start with a cup of warm water, but mild morning conflict of chai vs water that runs in my head invariably ends with water remaining in theory as a glass of plain water is never as enticing to me as sipping a cup of hot chai clubbed with crisp, spicy murukku in the backdrop of morning stillness basking in the sight of the bamboo tree swaying gently in the morning breeze as it indulges the playful squirrels aimlessly running around just as patiently as it tolerates the cacophony of seven sisters and the crows, and watching the world go by as the early morning workers hurry on, the old man from the corner house leisurely crouch with his cigarette, the paper delivery boys drive around with single minded focus, the neighbour draw the Kolam with a bored expression, the college kid on the other balcony with a book on one hand and a mobile phone on another, and then me, giving my ever-dependable companion, my cup of chai, a gentle hug with the palms of my hand, as my next alarms rips the quiet, cruelly ending my morning lethargy, something that I may never get bored of.

Gayathri had to this to say about the exercise:

Although we are writers by profession, this writing exercise gave a totally refreshing and challenging spin to the usual writing task. Adding ideas, connecting them, and then making sure it all flows in sync, and then padding up with more - surely worth a try.

Arjun

Arjun also picked up I drink tea and managed to push it to a 255-word behemoth 👏.

I drink tea because I like it and because other beverages that are in contention do not give me the same kind of satisfaction that I get from a good cuppa tea, and also probably (now this bit might be a bit of a gross detail, nevertheless) because it helps digestion and acts as a catalyst for proper bowel movements in the morning; but then as I reflect more upon my liking for tea, I am debating with myself whether this liking is something that was wired into me from a young age by my parents who are fierce patrons of the beverage, or whether it’s a liking that I formed on my own having sampled all the other contenders and pretenders; or is it because I come from a place where the official regional beverage is tea with its innumerable variants that range from the ‘Kattan’ or black tea to the ‘Sulaimani’ or lime tea to the ‘Podi chaya’ and many more, or perhaps it is because Byomkesh Bakshi who is one of my favourite characters from fiction has an addiction for tea and strongly believes that it helps stimulate his intellectual super powers when sitting with a complex problem to solve; or maybe, it’s just all of these little reasons combined that I like and drink tea, which makes me realize now that all this talk and reminiscing about tea has set the kettle going in my head and it’s time for my next cuppa, and so I will stop this rant here.

On this exercise, Arjun says:

I think it’s a wonderful exercise. What I felt was that you are challenging yourself to string phrases together, but at the same time all of it has to make sense and be coherent. Ultimately, good writing is an end product of clarity of thought. The exercise helps stimulate that.

Swetha Sridharan

Swetha has turned “Esmy loves meat!” to 100 word sentence:

Nearly four months after her arriving home and wasting so much wet food and cooked fish or meat that we had to leave on the streets for stray animals, we realized that Esmy, our cat, is not a fussy eater but is quite loyal to her taste buds and all that she was used to or wanted was dry cat food or raw meat, so much so that she will starve but not eat anything that she does not like and she clearly happened to be crazy about raw meat, be it mackerel, chicken, or poor mice in the car park.

Xavier

As a coffee lover, I had to do something with: I drink coffee. Here is one attempt (139 words):

There we were — sitting across each other at our comfortable and favourite posts near the window overlooking the crowded traffic-jammed street — our once-steaming coffee now slowly transforming itself to a lukewarm coffee and then progressing degree by degree to a cold coffee, aided by each wisp of the wind that was blowing into the cafe that cold December morning as I contemplate her earlier question of “So?” in the monotonous silence that was being drowned out by the refrain of Dido’s White Flag on the radio and wondering what she meant by that — Was she asking about the incidents of yesterday or was she just putting out that question to make small talk? — and as I begin to think of a reply, her phone trills buying me some more time to ponder about her question.

I wrote this for my 33^rd birthday: A 282-word expansion of It’s my birthday:

As the iron-cored blue-hued orange-shaped planet known as Terra rotated slowly on its obliquity of the ecliptic while revolving gradually and languidly tracing a somewhat elliptical journey around a bright yellow star, which the inhabitants of the aforementioned planet had named Sol, bringing about a phenomenon that the denizens of the planet perceived as if the sun was rising up from beyond the horizon looking as if it were struggling up against the clutches of the primordial darkness that held that blessed light-giver down, that glorious spectacle that the ancient Achaeans thought was that of the rosy-fingered, saffron-robed goddess Eos rising up from the streams of Oceanus in her chariot drawn by her steeds, Lampos and Phaithon, to herald the arrival of her brother Helios, on that twenty-second day of the second month of the second year of the second decade of the third millennium after the birth of a child whose birth had become a cornerstone marker for denoting time for the planet-dwellers, the bright glow from that sibling of Selene pierced the planet’s hazy nitrogen-rich atmosphere that dulled its glow and reduced its heat and found its way across a broad expanse of water that ancient cartographers had marked as Gangeticus Sinus in their hand-drawn parchment maps of their known world of long ago and then slowly slipped past the bright ocher-red curtains of the bedroom and awakened me to the beginning of my thirty-third year on this planet and my first thought on awakening was ‘Damn, unless someone soon figures out a way to build either a Morris-Thorne wormhole generator or an Alcubierre drive, I am going to be stuck on this planet Earth for the rest of my life’.

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If you’re feeling inspired and want to try this exercise, please do and send me your attempts. No judgements but it would be nice to read what people can come up with just three words.

Question to Ponder

If the word android is coined from Ancient Greek word ander (meaning male) and oid (meaning like or having the form of) to denote a robot that is like a male, then why do most of them have female names and voices? 🤔