Look deeper ... write! | Nicoletta Demetriou | TEDxUniversityofNicosia

Every morning, Nicoletta Demetriou writes for 15 minutes. In her talk, she beautifully describes the wonders of writing just for ourselves. She makes suggestions on how to start writing in our everyday lives - writing without thinking, writing to clear the clutter of our minds in order to find our own voice.

Nicoletta Demetriou studied music in Thessaloniki, Vienna, and London. Her studies in ethnomusicology focuses on Cypriot traditional music and how issues pertaining to ideology, politics, and identity influence the way traditional music is discussed and performed. She also studies creative writing, specializing in life writing (auto/biographical). Her current research is an attempt to bring ethnomusicology and life writing together, focusing on the lives of traditional music performers. Since 2012, Nicoletta has been a research fellow in ethnomusicology and life writing at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, and also a tutor in narrative non-fiction in Oxford’s Master of Studies in Creative Writing.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx.

Every morning,

I set my alarm 15 minutes
before the time I actually have to get up.

I sit up in bed,
take my notebook and pencil,

which I always leave
on my bedside table the night before,

and start writing.

In that zone of being
half awake and half asleep,

I write for 15 minutes.

I write before I get up,

before I've had a chance
to talk to anyone,

before I've had a chance to wash my face.

Most of the time, I don't even know
what I'm writing about,

and it doesn't really matter.

What does matter is not
the content of what I write,

but the very fact of putting pen to paper.

I'm involved in two disciplines
that have fancy names:

ethnomusicology and life writing.

As an ethnomusicologist,
I study people playing music.

I meet musicians, I interview them,

I learn about their music,

and then I write about them.

As a life-writer,
I write about people's lives.

Sometimes they're musicians,
sometimes they're not.

Sometimes I write
about other people's lives,

sometimes I write about my own.

The thing that binds my two seemingly
non-agreeing disciplines together

is writing.

Before turning to writing,

I studied music in Thessaloniki,
Vienna and London.

As part of my PhD in ethnomusicology,

I had to come to Cyprus
for a year of fieldwork.

I spent a year here
interviewing musicians,

talking to them about their lives,

playing and singing with them,

and learning how they thought
about the music that they played and sang.

After that year was over,

I went back to London
to write up the results of my research.

There were all these stories
that I wanted to share,

all these experiences
that I wanted to write about,

but I didn't know how.

The problem was not that I couldn't write;

the problem was that I didn't really know
what my own voice sounded like.

That's when I first came across the idea
that I'd like to share with you today.

The idea of writing that teaches you
to hear and trust your own voice.

So, reflecting on the theme
of this conference,

what I'd like to talk about today

is whether writing
can make us look deeper.

Can writing make us reach
feelings, thoughts and desires

that perhaps we didn't even know we had?

Can it connect us with what it is
that we've always wanted to do in life

but were somehow too scared to admit?

When I ask people this question,

the answer I very often get
is "I find writing scary."

But what is it about writing
that people find scary?

On the face of it,
writing is just a simple act.

You take a piece of paper,

you take a pen or a pencil
or you switch your computer on,

and you write.

Yet most of us here today have
experienced the fear of the blank page,

the fear of not knowing what to write.

So, what exactly is so scary?

It's not the simple act of writing
that's scary, of course,

but what lies behind it:

expectation and hearing -

and I mean really hearing -

your own voice.

Expectation is a great vice.

When I ask people whether they think
that writing could change their lives,

another version of the answer
I get is "I don't write."

So, when I ask back: "Okay,
so what do you mean, you don't write?"

The answer I get then
is "I'm not a writer."

But remember, the question here

wasn't whether you could write
the next great European novel,

nor whether you could win
the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The question here was whether the simple -

though, I admit, not easy -

act of writing can make us look deeper.

So, there's a feeling
of expectation lurking about

when we talk about writing,

in ways that it doesn't exist
when we talk about other things.

If I ask you, for example, "Do you cook?"

you won't necessarily think
that what I'm implying

is whether you've won
a Michelin star for your cooking.

By contrast though,
in my question about writing,

what people seem to assume
is that I want to know

whether they've won the equivalent
of a Michelin star for their writing.

Most of us think of writing
as something formal,

something done only when we apply
a certain number of rules and regulations,

and something that should bring about
very concrete results:

a book, a poem, a piece of research.

But here we're talking about writing

that will connect you
with nothing other than yourself,

something that you do in order
to come closer to who you really are.

When you write
with any degree of regularity -

and again, I don't mean when you write
in order to become a novelist

but simply when you write -

something wondrous begins to happen.

After training yourself
to write without thinking

for one, two or three weeks,

then you suddenly begin
to hear your own voice

much more clearly than before.

Our mind is normally cluttered
by a variety of thoughts and voices

which we don't actually hear,

and which, luckily,
we don't actually lead.

But they're always there
in the background.

If any of you have ever tried yoga
or meditation before,

and you're asked to keep your mind still
for as little as two minutes,

you know how difficult this really is.

According to data provided by [an]
institute of neuroresearch in the U.S.,

an average person has approximately
70,000 thoughts per day.

Other research shows this number
to be a bit smaller or a bit bigger,

but this is, more or less, the average.

The Buddhists call this incessant movement
of thoughts in our head "monkey mind."

Just as a monkey constantly
jumps from one branch

or from one tree to the other,

so does a monkey mind constantly jump
from one thought to the other,

seemingly without ever being able to stop.

Alright, so this is not exactly
a scientific metaphor,

but our mind resembles
a big, noisy highway

with hundreds of cars
passing through it every day.

What the practice of writing does

is that it slowly gets rid of
all the extra noise in our head,

making it resemble a rural street instead.

And that's when it gets
really scary for many people.

Why?

Because in all of that peacefulness,

when you're finally able
to hear your own voice,

you might suddenly discover

that you don't actually like
the job that you do,

or that you don't really want to live
in that huge house that you just bought,

or that you'd rather get a parrot
rather than the dog that you already have.

The feeling of being scared

comes from our being
too close to ourselves.

In fact, this closeness to ourselves,

this opening up to see things
that we didn't even know were there,

is why there's a therapeutic side
to writing as well,

to the extent that it now
forms part of psychology.

There's a form of therapy
called "writing therapy."

This is not of concern to us here today,

but it goes to show that writing

does something to our way
of looking at ourselves and other people

that's truly transformative.

Something more familiar to us,
perhaps, than writing therapy

might be the figure of a person
who keeps a journal or a diary

where his or her innermost
thoughts and feelings are recorded.

These diaries are, more often
than not, not meant to be seen,

but they serve the purpose

of connecting their author
to their feelings, thoughts and desires.

Okay, so how could we
use writing in our own lives

in order to look deeper
and come closer to ourselves?

How could any one of us
here in this audience today

use writing in order
to listen to our own voice?

You might think that this
doesn't really concern you,

that your life or job has
absolutely nothing to do with writing.

Yet even if what you have to do

is write a professional email
or compose a legal document,

you'll be surprised at how much more
convincing and official you'll sound

if you know what your own voice
actually sounds like.

The practice is very simple
and very cheap too.

And many people have
already written about this.

All you need is a notebook
and a pen or a pencil.

You may wonder whether you
could do all this on a computer.

Well, you could, but it won't be
the same experience.

Recent studies have shown

that children's brains develop
differently when writing by hand,

as opposed to writing on the keyboard.

And there's evidence to suggest

that there are comparable benefits
in adults writing by hand too.

What's more, writing
is not only an intellectual activity.

If you write by hand, your whole body
gets involved in the process.

Your hand becomes
an extension of your mind,

and so the whole process of writing
becomes a mind and body activity.

Okay, so back to the practice.

You go and sit somewhere quiet,

somewhere you're less likely
to have any interruptions,

and you start writing without thinking.

Now, this is the difficult part.

You do not think about writing,

you do not think about anything.

So while you're writing,

you're not thinking "Hmm, I wonder what
I'm going to cook tomorrow for lunch."

Nor are you thinking "Well, I wish I'd put
the black coat instead of the red one."

No, you write without thinking;
you keep your hand moving.

That is the key.

You do not stop to check,

you do not stop to correct.

You do not care about your spelling,

you do not care
about the lines on the paper.

You write in whatever language,
dialect or idiom that you like,

or in a combination
of languages or idioms.

You keep your hand moving.

You write without thinking for 15 minutes.

That is the key.

When you are done, you do not
go back to check what you've written.

You simply close your notebook
until your next writing session.

So, what do you write about?

Anything.

You try to catch your thoughts and put
them on paper as quickly as you can.

After all the clutter
in your mind is gone,

you might suddenly discover

that there were things
that you wanted to write after all:

those stories your grandfather
used to tell you,

those letters that your parents gave you,

or love or loss or the feeling
of trauma or happiness in your life.

If you write with any degree
of regularity,

the question of discipline
becomes crucial.

Remember that you're not writing
for an audience here, but for yourself.

Yet the repetition is vital

for cutting out any resistance
that you may have to writing.

Tolstoy once wrote in his diary:

"I must write each day without fail,

not so much for the success of the work,
as in order not to get out of my routine."

I understand that perhaps not all of us
may be able to keep up with such a demand,

but even if we don't write
each day without fail,

the important thing is
to keep the practice of writing,

despite all the difficulties that may
and that will arise in the process.

I can almost hear
some of you saying "This is hard."

Yes, of course it is.

No one ever said
this was going to be easy.

But it's also all about practice.

If you decide to run the marathon,

you won't simply show up
on the day of the race.

You'll start training yourself,
little by little,

until finally you're able
to run the whole thing.

It's exactly the same with writing.

We don't expect to run
the marathon on the first day.

But we practice each day,

each day taking it a little bit further.

For those of you who may wonder
what the point of all this is,

or why you should devote any
of your precious little time to writing,

I can tell you it's because
this will transform your lives.

So, if you would really like
to look deeper,

both within yourselves
and within other people,

if you would really like to get to know
what your own voice sounds like,

if you would really like to get to know

what it is that you
truly want to do in life,

then give writing a chance.

Write with no expectations and no demands.

Write simply with the curiosity
to see what will happen

and with the conviction
that something will happen.

Look deeper and keep writing.

Thank you.

(Applause)