To be a better writer, you must be yourself, because „everybody else is already taken,” said Oscar Wilde.
Tolstoy, Woolf, Murakami...
All the best authors have a voice, a style unique to themselves. And the moment you try and imitate them, you've lost yours. Your writing will be a copy. And you won't discover your own uniqueness.
What’s the way to knowing yourself then? I have got to know myself the most through interactions. Interacting with other people, their moods and opinions; travelling and interacting with different cultures, their traditions, written and unwritten laws; interacting with the arts, be it poetry, music, or dance... All of them give you a better understanding of yourself. You discover exactly what you like and dislike, form more thoughts because you see more, make more comparisons.
Also... Bombard yourself with art. Multiple interactions happen every day even if you sit at home alone with your computer. Watch a film and you will interact with a complex web of thoughts, formed by the screenwriter(s), analysed by the director, and delivered to you by the actors. Read a book and you will meet an author’s deep reflections on a given subject. Contrast and compare these with your own opinions and you will have a conversation that may widen your perspective, or show you where you stand with your thoughts, as well as where you may go with them.
I’ve recently heard about a couple of friends, and now-famous artists, Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, who regularly organised themselves unusual film-nights. They would go to see at least three different films but they wouldn’t stay until the end of any projection. Instead, they would watch about ten to fifteen minutes of one film, stroll to a different cinema, walk in the middle of a film to watch another fifteen minute snippet, and another one, and another one... This would go on until they felt artistically satisfied! (If I hadn’t mentioned these were Dalí and Buñuel, someone might just quip on this with, „well, what a charming way to waste an evening!”) Dalí and Buñuel essentially bombarded themselves with art, and look how inspired they were!
Even the smallest interactions have the potential to teach you about yourself. The more you see, the more you notice. With that consciousness, you feel richer because you can later pass your reflections on, you can write.
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