By: WIlliam Jones

When I start a new project, it usually starts with a voice, then an image, then a vision. I hear and see fragments of stories or ideas from my surroundings, and then I begin the work of penmanship. Listening is an important tool in a writer’s box; it’s an act of community, but it requires space, time, and silence. Once I hear the voice I want to tell, I let it seep deep enough into me that it becomes akin to mine – a second skin – and writing from that becomes a natural response. Any story you write requires some goddammit belief, living inside deeply; it requires conviction, so the voices you write from, or the ideas you see, carry enough strength to be told.

True novelists, writers, artists will never go out of fashion because they tell stories bubbling inside of them, uniquely theirs to share; stories seen and heard in ways no one else has and so no one else can tell them as they would.

My Evolving Relationship with Writing 

Writing is like a marriage, you either grow together, or you part ways when the turbulence or languish becomes all there is to bind. I always knew I wanted to write, but writing requires you to have your wits about you; it’s an act of conviction, craft, and bravery. Even in my bravest moments, I don’t think I was brave enough. I would still think I was cowardly, timid, externalizing what was mine to own under the garb of sacrifice and other excuses.

To be a writer is to be really brave.

It took many panic attacks, breakage, repairs, growing into myself, and years of emergence to finally see myself as one. I’ve kept this marriage strong with words. I’ve grown more disciplined, clearer with my words, clearer with my thinking, clearer with the emotions I want to convey, more comfortable in myself, and natural as a writer. We’ve settled into harmony, and it’s taken many gruelling years to get here. I don’t think I would have emerged into this oneness with myself as a writer if I hadn’t suffered the highs and lows this work offers.

Photo Courtesy: Devangana Mishra
(Brain Bristle’s work with inclusion in Mumbai low-income schools)

The Disastrous Moment of Reaching the Middle of a Book

To give wings to paper, to something moist and full of rubble, requires an energy no writer actually plans for. Many times you reach a point in the middle where you’re like, “fuck it,” and you stop caring about the wings you wanted to give your work, and you let it sop. Or you drag your feet for the last miles. Or you begin taking shortcuts with the craft, with the beauty that language can offer, you hand it over, it’s just one line, a bit of shoddiness or inauthenticity here and there, it doesn’t matter.

Then, of course, it’s easy to pivot from perfectionism (which can feel maniacal to both you and the reader) to free creation, which can be icky and unpolished. It takes many stretches of moving back and forth between block and flow to find a rhythm that is seamless and true to your work. First drafts are usually strings of purged words and thoughts. They either lose momentum halfway, get abandoned, or make it to the end only for the real work to begin. That’s when you start pumping energy into what you began, growing its wings through craft, moulding, learning, iteration, and reiteration until you reach a place where you feel that’s it, I’ve steered its flight in the direction I’d like it to fly in; through hard winds and storms.

This endeavor of steering a bird with wings in wide, open skies can end in something spectacular, or something that didn’t quite take flight, or something half-baked for the drawer. But you attempted it anyway, that always matters.

I try to give my 100 percent to most work, and then many times I realize my 100 percent isn’t actually anyone else’s 100 percent. That’s funny, but also heartbreaking. So I give another 100 percent and sit back with the same realization: my entirety of work might not be a drop in an ocean, or maybe  a word in a web of languages. That tension between my perception and the reader’s demand keeps me growing in what I can do best. I think that’s healthy, it keeps you propelling, but sane.

The Building of Brain Bristle 

Brain Bristle is my temple of work, one I bow to. I’ve bowed to the work of autism since I was about twenty, which makes it half my life. After working at multiple organizations, teaching, creating, writing, and leading, I knew I had the energy to build my own home. Being a great guest in someone else’s home and living in it like your own is good manners, but building one yourself to be a good guest and a bountiful owner in it is far, far more challenging.

I began Brain Bristle by returning to ground zero, I did what I did twenty years ago- teaching children on the autism spectrum in a private club I was a member of. It was time and energy-consuming, and it felt complete. 

But looking back at my years of work, I knew I had a vision and energy that could do more, impact more lives, build advocacy, and work larger, grow wings. That realization led me to make autism support accessible in low-income schools. Today, we’ve expanded across verticals and domains, mobilizing bright young people in ways I hadn’t envisioned until I began building and finding wheels for the movement.

I wouldn’t have the gravity that writing and creating require if I didn’t sit on the ground every day, looking at student grades, behaviour plans, and progress reports, and working with multiple stakeholders to maximize them. The belief, commitment, that deeply threaded composition of things toward doing right by our students, this obsessive attention to important details, and the imagination that work with autism demands organically translates into my work with the arts. One wouldn’t be without the other. One’s my prayer and the other’s my pride, and both change faces and names to keep this work alive.

I don’t know how things will look five years from today with all of this- I’ll know when there’s a sense of pause, the kind you receive when you’ve done a task to your best ability. And that heart-shaped pocket carved out for pauses grows in size with time and experience, so it takes more and more work you’re proud of, to fill in, to truly fill that bounty with Ohm.