Writing What You Cannot See: Here Is How to Do It Well...From a Blind Man
The Power of Noticing: How Writers Can Tune In
About 25 years ago, I was on a bus with some friends. The engine was roaring, the bus was speeding along, and I wanted to ask the friend sitting across the aisle for his water bottle.
Simple enough.
But he had earphones jammed in and was probably listening to music at full blast.
I tugged at his shirt.
He spun around and practically shouted in my face, asking what I wanted.
Despite the noise around us, the whole bus heard him. Heads turned, necks craned. That made a few of us go red.
Well — except me. I was blissfully unaware of what was happening.
Blindness introduced a host of challenges to my life.
My eyes, without the benefit of sight, would look around for visual cues, catching none.
As a result, I would get perilously close to objects, miraculously stopping short of falling over and hurting myself. This was probably because someone screamed at me to stop at the very last minute.
There were other times when my luck would run out. I would crash violently into walls and the edges of door frames. People around me would look up from whatever they were doing after hearing that unmistakable thwack.
At the time of the bus ride, I had been blind for about six years — not quite done with the process of unlearning vision and adapting to blindness.
In fact, I was still learning to interpret my environment through sounds, smells, textures, and the tiny shifts I picked up from my immediate surroundings.
Conventional wisdom said blindness was a big disadvantage. I should shrink my life into a tiny space. Or stick to familiar places and routines.
“Do not try anything silly and hurt yourself,” whispered my so-called well-wishers.
But blind as I was, what happened on that bus was an eye-opener.
I realised my friend could not hear me at all. Otherwise able-bodied, he was temporarily disabled because of those earphones, cranking up the volume to let Céline Dion sing to his soul.
What shocked me even more was how long it took me to register his temporary disengagement from the world around us.
When the embarrassment subsided and my friend read the situation (and removed his earphones), I made a mental note: if someone does not respond immediately, check whether they are simply disconnected from their immediate surroundings.
Something else struck me like an epiphany at that moment.
The world around me may rely on vision for almost everything — but I did not have to. I could access the non-visual senses much more naturally than they did.
No wonder that small, silly incident stayed with me. It taught me to sharpen my listening skills.
And that came in handy when I began writing, not just writing anything, but personal essays about my life, my memories, my world.
Even when I write about moments from my past now, the details mostly arrive through my ears, skin, and fingertips.
Sure, there are visual images tucked away from the years when I could see. I can still picture a face crumpling with tears or a mouth curling up into a half-moon grin.
But the real texture comes from everything else.
Later, when I started reading essayists like Hope Edelman, Robin Hemley, Gay Talese, and Truman Capote, I realised their writing was not just about how things looked. It was about how a room smelt, how someone’s voice cracked from exhaustion, how the air shifted before a storm, how grief hung heavy like damp clothes on a line.
And because blindness made me lean so heavily on my other senses, it gave me an edge. I began noticing tiny things in people’s voices — a hoarseness that meant they were unwell, a quiet sparkle that gave away a good mood.
Even a crowded local bus told a hundred stories through its thick swirl of body odours alone.
Somewhere along the way, I figured out something useful.
I did not have to chase after other writers and their elaborate visual descriptions. I could, of course, describe a face or a room. I have seen the world, after all. But my real strength came from writing what I could feel, hear, smell, and taste.
And honestly, as a reader, you know this too. A piece that only describes what something looks like feels a bit flat after a while.
But bring in the other senses — the smell of rain-soaked earth, the scratch of wool on bare skin, the sour tang of buttermilk — and the whole thing comes alive.
Now you might wonder, “Where does AI come into this?”
Well, these days, I sometimes run my drafts through Google Gemini just to check whether I am balancing the senses right.
You can ask it whether your story leans too heavily on visual imagery or if the other senses are showing up well. It is not perfect, but it gives you a sense of where your writing stands.
If you are up for it, here is a small exercise I follow — you might enjoy trying it too.
Close your eyes.
Take a deep breath.
What do you smell? Is it warm, sharp, sweet, musty?
Note it down.
Now listen.
What is the farthest sound you can catch? What is the closest?
Note those too.
Feel something.
What is under your fingers? How does the air feel around you? Is your shirt soft, rough, scratchy?
If you can, taste something.
A sip of water. A piece of fruit. A biscuit. Is it tangy, flat, crisp, warm?
Capture that.
Then, open your eyes and put those lines together.
You will have a little paragraph that feels warmer, fuller, and somehow more alive than what you might usually write.
The bonus?
This little sensory meditation is one of the best tricks I know to snap yourself out of writer’s block or that odd reluctance to write. It instantly shifts you into the writing zone, no matter where your mind was a few minutes earlier.
Do this a few times and you will notice your writing will start coming through your whole body, not just your eyes.
And your stories will feel more rooted, more textured, more there.
Presence lives in your senses.
And your writing will too.