“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” ― Anais Nin
My intention is to reflect on writing with passion at a time Sri Lanka is producing writing, at least in the Sinhala language, that is worthy of being introduced to the world. When I say this, I am thinking of creative writing. There is no such promise by and large when it comes to academic writing. And it does not seem to me that the idea of promoting our writing, ways of writing, and reaching to the world, are issues seriously addressed by our universities, despite their focus in training young people in language and literatures. Unfortunately, however, the idea of writing, though central to all disciplines in social sciences and humanities, has been under-emphasised to the extent of being made almost invisible in academic, professional and popular discourses today in our country.
It is my strong personal belief that academic writing, produced in our country in the two languages I am familiar with, is of no significant intellectual consequence, globally. That is, they do not impact the thinking in humanities and social sciences in the world. I know this is not a popular position. But I say so with confidence and responsibility stemming from my experience in traversing in the worlds of writing for over three decades. Also, it is commonsense, if one does not have the command of language and, particularly, the ability to write, however good one’s other technical skills might be, the likelihood of you finding it difficult to find employment or being underemployment is high.
But this also depends on the cultural and social capital within a person’s immediate location and the nature of the market in that location and in different parts of the world one wants to be in, what exact language one must have control over and so on. It is in this specific context that I want to reflect on two kinds of writing that should be important to all disciplines in social sciences and humanities. One is academic writing. The other is creative writing.
But I am not thinking of writing as a mere operational and technical tool of communication and expression. Instead, I am thinking of writing as a matter of passion and a product of conviction. Operational command in writing will allow a person to get by. But one might still remain ordinary, one among thousands of others who have the same abilities in writing, here and globally.
But if you can master your writing with passion and conviction, if you self-consciously put in the effort that is needed to make this happen, then, you will go beyond the ordinary and excel in your individual fields – given reasonable access to right conditions and networks. But this does not downgrade the crucial fact that writing at the most fundamental level is a technical skill allowing for communicating effectively through the written word. In this minimum technical sense, writing needs to embrace the following essential components: grammar; vocabulary; spelling; sentence construction; structure, research and accuracy; clarity and persuasiveness.
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Without paying attention to these basic facts, writing cannot be effective, whether it is academic or creative. Passion can help you master these components while confidence will follow after you have mastered these. My argument is, it is due to our collective inability to pay attention to the power of writing, both academically and creatively, that we as a country no longer produce, as we should, practitioners in social sciences or humanities of global repute. If we do, that will be an exception rather than the norm.
Until the mid-1970s this was possible with regard to academic writing in social sciences as well as humanities. For instance, it is through the excellence in their writing that writers in Sri Lankan social sciences, like professors Gananath Obeyesekere and Stanley Tambiah and writers in humanities like Professors Ediriweera Saratchchandra, Siri Gunasinghe and Martin Wickramasinghe received global recognition.
But it should be noted that the creative works of the latter three were mostly in Sinhala. All three were nevertheless capable of expressing their ideas to global readers in English through their own scholarly writing and some of their local works in Sinhala were renowned enough to be translated into English and other culturally and socially powerful languages. This was clearly the case with Martin Wickramasinghe.
So, when I am talking about passion and conviction in writing, I am not making a simplistic reference to English language writing alone as often happens in our country given that language’s global political and cultural dominance. My point is, our writing – be that academic or creative writing or be that in English, Sinhala or Tamil – must be good enough to capture the attention of the world and be noticed. And this can only come via writing, invested with passion and confidence.
And if we write well in Sinhala or Tamil, then, we must find ways to take these to the world through globally dominant languges. That is, through viable translations. This is how writings in languges that vary from Italian to Spanish and Turkish to Chinese and Japanese have travelled to the world from their own original and restricted language domains. However, passion and conviction in writing, or any other professional domain of knowledge, cannot be taught in universities. Universities, particularly at undergraduate level, are only places meant for basic training. They can, however, encourage and create enabling spaces to ensure that basic training is further fine-tuned by receivers of knowledge in these places. That is, students and even teachers. But the actual and professional fine-tuning of writing with passion and conviction must necessarily come from practice to begin with and competition with others, both in this country and beyond. So excelling is an individual effort and cannot be something collective or institutional.
This brings to my mind Stephen King’s words expressed in his book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.” But then again, to go in such directions, institutions, which in our case are universities, government or private programmes that encourage excellence in writing, can play a crucial role by introducing our writers to global or regional networks through which their writing can hopefully cross international as well as linguistic borders. I am not only thinking of creative writing when I say this. I also have in mind technical writing – from software development to military strategy – if we produce good enough writing in specific technical fields that the world might find useful.
This is where our country has serious problems. I don’t see our universities, or too many institutions beyond universities, providing access to writers to excel in their craft. In academia, giving extremely naïve recognitions, such as awards for the ‘best paper’ at the end of many conferences for average writing ,will simply not be good enough. Personally, I have never received such an award. But my academic writing has crossed many borders, curricular, institutions and languages in the world. Not having a competitive system of university presses or similar publishing operations in our country to take our writing to the world or to produce the most competitive writing locally, does not help too.
Finally, when I talk about writing produced with passion and conviction, I am not simply thinking about writing that will produce texts for leisure. I am also thinking about the broader local and global markets in which writing would be a conduit for being noticed in a competitive world and a means of employment.
(This essay is based on the keynote address delivered at the 4th Student Research Symposium of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Open University of Sri Lanka, 2 August 2025)
