“One thing I can tell you is this — I am not a methodical writer,” is a quote attributed to Wole Soyinka, Nigerian author, poet, playwright, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. Margaret Atwood, Canadian author, poet, essayist, literary critic and winner of the Booker Award, on the other hand, claims: “When I am writing fiction, I am much better organised, more methodical — one has to be when writing a novel.”

Two eminent literary giants demonstrating that there’s no one fixed approach to writing ... and, by extension, to virtually anything.

When embarking on the dream of playing cricket for my country, I was told at the outset: “Choose a style that suits you.” I had, for a very brief period, flirted with the notion of imitating my more experienced friend of that time, Krishna Kumar, who flayed the cricket ball to all corners of the ground and, had T20 been in vogue in that era, would have ended up a multi-millionaire just for swishing his bat audaciously and connecting so sweetly.

I tried venturing down that route, but my swishing arcs were obviously not of the same calibre, for the ball consistently beat my flashing willow and thudded into some part of my body. Pain is a great mind-changer. Especially pain disguised later as a massive black-blue blotch, raised on the skin like a road hump. I became moderately good at getting behind the ball and keeping it out; and somewhat decent at shouldering arms to anything outside the off stump (unless it was a vicious swinger that started from leg and snaked across the body enroute to the slips via a gentle nick. Such a delivery, by the way, was more often an accidental one, for nobody among us was capable of bowling in one fixed area, leave alone swinging the ball prodigiously. If it happened, it was termed a “fluke”, thereby granting the bowler no quarter even in dismissal.

Anyhow, my stonewalling skills would have done a Geoff Boycott proud, but thankfully T20 wasn’t the adrenaline-rusher it is today, so people were willing to sit for hours and watch a batsman keep the bowler out without much else happening.

While my approach had a sort of method to it, my pal Krishna went about things with haphazard instinct. He could have been the Wole Soyinka of the batting crease. I have absolutely no idea where my former childhood classmate is today and whether his un-orthodox approach to batting spilled over into other areas of his lifestyle. Did he fold his clothes meticulously and put them away? Did he peel his socks off and chuck them into the wash or did he first turn them back on to the right side so that they’d be ready for wear when dry? Was he fussy about arrangement? Did things have to be in their place? Like the plates in the plate rack: Did he place them in random order? Or did he put the bigger plates at the back and the quarter plates in front and the tinier saucers in front of the quarter plates? Did he instinctively complete something that needed completing and not leave it for finishing later, lest he forget?

And things like that ... which have become second nature, now. Habit. Practice. Reflex. All these questions I have begun to ask myself now at this late stage because I have suddenly started wondering if there isn’t a paradox with being methodical. It kind of comes back to shoot you in the foot, as it were. Methodical ones have little time for the scatter brained. Everything is in place. Nothing is left to test the memory. There’s no case of, “I must remember to do this later. Because methodically, it’s already been done”. However, in doing so, aren’t we the fastidious ones encouraging ourselves to be forgetful rather than training our brains to remember? Or am I missing a point somewhere?

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.