By putting my work out there, I learned to be comfortable with reaching “stopping points” on my stories, to summarize my stories and “pitch it”, to grapple with what the value of each story even is and if it’s really saying something interesting to anyone at all, and of course, to digest other people’s feedback and use it as a chance to improve.
Would you please tell us a little bit about your writing process?
As a relatively new writer, I am still trying to figure out exactly what my process is. My day job as an aerospace engineer gets quite busy, and I sometimes find myself not writing enough. For me, the solution has been setting up artificial deadlines and goalposts in my head. For example, “you need to finish another chapter of your book by Saturday so you can send it to your friend!” Thus, no matter what, I make time to put the pen to the page. I have found this to help me stay consistent with my writing, and I always feel great afterwards because I feel myself improving and, most of all, having fun!
What are the most important steps an amateur writer can take?
As an amateur writer myself, I have felt that nothing has allowed me to improve more or been more meaningful than simply writing more. As in, engaging in the act of putting my fingers to the keyboard, and writing a short story or chapter. Even if it is not the best, or even if it’s not the most inspired idea, actually going through the exercise of transforming abstract thoughts in my head into tangible words on a page has done wonders for me, and allowed me to improve way faster than if I had pursued perfection.
This is probably especially true for amateurs because we are so far from perfection anyways! So the more I overthink things or overplan a project, the more I am doing a disservice to myself and my improvement. Even from a time perspective, I have found that I am usually quicker when I write something extremely rough and then continuously re-edit and re-write it than when I am trying to write something “great” the first time around.
What is the best piece of advice you have received? Or what is the best piece of advice you would offer an aspiring writer?
I had a really good friend tell me that I needed to put my writing “out into the world”, whatever that means. I had told him that I wrote just for myself, and I didn’t have any desire to see other people read it. He countered that putting work out there (submitting it to competitions, posting it on a blog, etc.) is an exercise in improvement in and of itself, and that by putting it out there, I’d be forced to learn about and improve on ALL of what writing entails.
Fast forward some time, and I think he was completely right. By putting my work out there, I learned to be comfortable with reaching “stopping points” on my stories, to summarize my stories and “pitch it”, to grapple with what the value of each story even is and if it’s really saying something interesting to anyone at all, and of course, to digest other people’s feedback and use it as a chance to improve.
What do you believe is the function of your art?
For me, it’s simple. It’s solely for my own enjoyment, emotional catharsis, and mental stimulation. Writing (along with making music) is just an amazing outlet! I always feel super satisfied when loose collections of ideas in my head actually become something cohesive and real. One day, maybe my writing could be more than this… maybe — but for now, it being just a great hobby is fine by me!
Which question do you wish you were asked more?
I wish more people asked me about how writing and engineering overlap and differ! Of course, there are a LOT of differences between the two, but I genuinely believe that both are beautiful exercises in creativity (writing = creativity + language, engineering = creativity + physics), and I think more artistic folks should engage the scientific sides of their minds and more scientific folks should engage the artistic sides of their minds. I’ve personally found that I am both a better engineer AND a better writer for it!
What do you find most inspiring?
I am awed and inspired by books and all storytelling mediums, but ironically, nothing inspires me more than music. I listen to and make a lot of different types of music, and the emotions and storytelling that a song or album can contain never cease to blow my mind. So, in addition to taking inspiration from countless books and even movies, when I write, I am oftentimes chasing an emotional core than some musician or song makes me feel and trying to tap into it via the medium of writing. I think channeling the storytelling (and emotional) power of books combined with the raw, primal nature of music has led me to writing some of the work I’m most proud of.
Kaushal Gokare is an aerospace and fusion energy engineer from metro-Atlanta. He enjoys exploring speculative and sci-fi themes with his work, which ranges from meta-fiction to domestic dramas taking place lightyears from Earth. He hopes his stories spark discussions and debates about what it means to be a human being in a world that changes more quickly than we can often understand.