Hang Out With Writer Friends

Dear M,

One of the limitations I have faced in my writerly life is the lack of close writer friends. Think of your school friends with whom you discuss pretty much anything and still not feel bad about saying or listening to things - that's the level of friendship I am talking about. One cannot expect that kind of candour or understanding from "new" friends, all the time. And with something as sensitive as your own piece of writing, you need someone who can handle it carefully for you.

Not everyone can appreciate feedback the way it should be. Not everyone can deliver feedback the way it should be.

Even a negative point delivered kindly could be misconstrued. It's like a mother taking offence at someone pointing out her child's bad behaviour. And many of us writerly folks unfortunately cannot boast of a placid temperament - hence the term, "artistic temperament".

And it's not only about feedback; it is about healthy discussions that could bring out interesting points to think about. Talks about famous authors' styles, their strengths, their limitations, the depth or shallowness of their writing: there is so much to learn. And discussions are the best way to expand upon thoughts, explore writing, bounce ideas, meet other writers. You can never tell where all this could lead to.

Love.

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The Roles We Play...

Dear M,

Have you any idea how many books come out every year? Or films, perhaps?

Any idea how many books a person can write in a year? (Let's assume we are talking only about novels.) Or, how many films an actor can act in, in a year? There are so many "prolific" writers who churn out a few number of books a year - whereas we take three years to finish one!

No wonder then that others expect us to bring out books after books as though we are issuing newspapers. Oh, are you writing? So, have you published anything after that? 
And you go, Uh-Bah-Blah-Hmm-Err-
In literary circles they call it speechless or dumbfounded or something similar. As though your tongue has been plucked out. You suddenly stand there wondering where you must have misplaced your tongue.

We know that question's coming - we can hear and smell it from afar. We scurry to change the topic, introduce new topics of conversation, anything to veer it off the obvious and heart-breaking direction.

Talk about the roles each one of us has to play to get through in life!

Love.

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Of Art and Spirituality

Dear M,

If art doesn't make you spiritual, I don't know what will.

Much of what art involves, is timing. Definitely, talent, skill, learning and the ability to work hard are required, of course. But once your part is done, the most painful part is waiting. You're waiting for your work to get somewhere. And you don't know when, where or how it is going to happen. (You desist from imagining that it will not happen.)

And when you wait - and wait and wait and wait - you tend to hover dangerously close to the edge of giving up, and then you begin to think, God, (or Universe or Nature or Planet Earth, whatever gives you strength) how much longer? Give me courage to not give up now that I have come this far.

And in my journey I have been tempted to believe heavily that there is a time and place for everything. That's what I have seen. Things will happen at a snail's pace, but they will, at their own time. People are involved at every stage. They may have difficulties, issues, things that keep them from getting to us, making our world revolve again.

There is no use our getting impatient, or even giving up. Oh yes, I did give up on waiting once. And then it came back to me after I had moved on. We need to learn to wait (or not lose hope even after we have moved on!), and for that, we need a lot of courage. When we do not have it in abundance, or what we have begins to dwindle, we look for sources of strength. Desperately.

Because losing never got us anywhere.

Love.

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Writers Need a Day Job

Dear M,

Do you know why we writers should have a day job? Yes, writing does not offer you enough money to make ends meet, etc. etc., we all know that drill. But having a job which is (or not) related to writing could serve two purposes. Well, not always, but it does not hurt to see the bright side.

One is the much required break from writing. Even if we curse our job, it offers a clearer view when we get back to writing. While we write, we keep ourselves focussed on the task at hand, and we fail to see the macro view. The break sheds some light in the dark corners. Who knows, we may even find some interesting stories from our work place.

The second advantage, and this comes only to the luckier ones especially in India, are the words that get thrown around by your co-workers. I can narrate so many instances when words tossed casually by someone during a chat or a formal meeting came back to me while writing - even if they were common words, they would elude us when we need them. But hearing it from others is like a blessing, it will wander somewhere in the conscious section of our memory, and spring to our fingertips at the right time. If not, we will end up wallowing for hours in the thesaurus and still not come up with the perfect word.

So you see? Even if you have a job that is no fun, don't worry. It will only enhance the writer in you.

Love.

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Don't try too hard

Dear M,

This post is inspired by a film and a book. The film is a comedy, and it does have its funny moments. One of the actors is a very talented person and I have recently had the occasion to admire his performance in a touching role. The book was written by the author for his ten year old son.

I was not impressed with the actor in the movie. And I was not impressed with the writing in the book.

The problem in both was that, the actor and the author were trying too hard. The veteran actor, to whom normally comedy comes as easy as breathing, the author to whom writing is as effortless, were trying too hard to impress. The actor seemed very conscious that this was a comedy film, and he was putting in an extra round of expression or a heightened tone of voice, or something. The author had to impress his ten year old. And everyone knows that ten year olds aren't easily impressed. If the son doesn't like the story, he is going to ask straight to his face: "Do they call you a good author?"

Both were nervous, both had to create an impact. It showed.

To me, this happens when I try to write something that did not come normally to me. When I try to squeeze my creativity and channel it into a theme someone else has provided. We can do that too, effectively, if we take ample time. When we have the time to understand that theme and let it enter us, by allowing it to flow in our veins, to blow through our respiratory tunnels, to waddle in our nervous system.

If we are given a topic and asked to come up with something tomorrow, the result probably could be good, but not great. We don't settle for good, do we?

Love.

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Tormented Souls

Dear M,

Artists are tormented souls - it is so decreed. And the torment is not romantic, the way it is portrayed in films. They don't gaze out at the sea or get drenched in the rain with a handsomely gloomy face until (soon) their dream comes true.

The real ones go crazy in the confines of their homes because they know they are trying their best, and for years they have been trying; if they are missing something, it is because there is no one to guide or direct them. They wander in the dark hoping that their hand would encounter something to show that they are on the right path - or at least to show where they are. Are they near the wall, or are they near a door? Are they at the edge of a bottomless well?

They look around themselves and wake up in the dark and ask themselves, What am I supposed to do? They try to keep themselves engaged so that the pain does not surface.

They read success stories and they throw the newspaper away. Now and then they are tempted to bang their heads against the wall. They look at others leading 'happy' lives - people next door who go to office, come home and attend to their children and go to bed - and wonder why they can't be just as normal.

They don't know if their story will have a happy ending. Or will it be a hard stop, the end? With nothing achieved except a few years of dreams?

Why would anyone want to have such a life, the life of an artist - The Mad Artist ? The only reason I can think of is that they don't know how unbelievable the struggle can get.

They? We. Me. I.

Love.

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Repetitive Scenes

Dear M,

We don't notice the recurring themes / scenes / thoughts / words in our own writing. Especially when we have been writing for several years. In the initial phase, we would remember every word, every line, every thought that went behind our stories because we would be reading it over and over again. But as time passes, the older writing fades from mind. We end up writing something very similar, in a recent story.

I noticed recently that my stories always revolve around a certain period in the history of our country. Our generation does not have the luxury of being part of the independence struggle, or the world war, or any of those exciting times. If we wish to write about those events, we need to research and understand what it must have been like. (Some day, perhaps.) As of now, I would write about events I have known. And there are a couple of them standing apart in memory or in the stories I have heard from people around me. Events which I might have been part of, but was too young to remember much of; events that were so real, so close, that a shudder goes up my spine when I remember it.

And these events draw me to them like a magnet and in three isolated instances I noticed that I tried to include these in my story. While it could be done harmlessly, we could also mess it up for the reader, who might dare to read a second book of ours: Oh !*groan* Why does this author have to write about that event in every single novel?

We certainly don't want that, do we?

Love.

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The Beasts Within Us - 2

Dear M,

We all know how to hurt someone. We do so consciously and unconsciously. We do throw around words like hypocrite, sadist etc. at others, but we close our eyes towards the fact that we are hypocrites and sadists in bits and pieces. We do find some relief, if not joy, in causing a pin-prick in someone's arm, for any tiny or huge reason whatsoever. And that pin-prick might go on to become a wound that causes the arm to be amputated. And then we shrug, to shake the guilt off our own shoulders, and tell ourselves that what we did was a mere pin-prick, this was surely caused due to something else. Sound familiar? Yes? Good. Now go write that story, change the names and take the weight off your chest.

Love.

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The Beasts Within Us

Dear M,

Remember the bad guys in the old Hindi movies? It was so easy to hate them, despise them. It was so easy to look at ourselves and shake our heads - no, I am not the villain. I am more like the hero. My intentions are good.

But today the bad guys in movies and books have begun to appear more real. They do not do bad just for doing bad. They do not walk out and molest a woman for the heck of it. If they do it, there is some reason behind it. (At least that's how I like to believe: that mistakes are forced on people. I would not want to dwell too much on the completely criminal mind, at least for now.)

He fell in love with her. She reciprocated. He dreamed about possessing her, owning her. Then one day he realised that she was no longer interested. There was someone else, an older man who seemed to catch her fancy for no valid reason as far as he could see. He asked her, begged her, pleaded to her. She did not even bother to reply. Then he heard that she was pledged to the other man. He did not stop to think. He stormed into her house, locked her mother up, and he barged into her room. She turned in alarm. He closed the door. She could see murder in his eyes. He destroyed her, brutally, vengefully, with a fury that he had never known he could possess. Then he walked out of the house and never returned. 
(Rough summary, from a novel)

When ordinary people with ordinary dreams - people like us - are provoked, they react in unknown, unpredictable ways. That is what, as writers, we could strive to bring out. The demon in us. The angel in us. The unknown. The beast that could transform from the demon of darkness to an angel of kindness. The truth about us - that we seek to conceal from the world - could be horrifying. Bring it out, on paper.

Love.

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The Soul of the Story

Dear M,

What is the soul of a story, the factor on which a story revolves, the thing that makes the story human? (Assuming we are talking about stories involving humans or living things that think and behave like humans)

Our unpredictability. We decide to go to office, and half-way through, we remember how tiresome the day is going to be, how our boss is going to hammer us out of existence, how our colleagues are going to make us feel inferior, how our work is going to extract the last ounce of happiness from us - and then we take the next U-turn on the highway, and head towards the nearest mall and watch a couple of movies and eat to our heart's content and even play a bit in the play arena with the wide-eyed kids there. When we didn't turn up at the office, our boss gets irritated (and kind of relieved that he doesn't have to make a choice any more) and decides to award the big project to the next eligible (and available) candidate. So a small detour in our routine brought in a sparkle to a few lives.

That's it with writing stories - if you go in a pre-determined route, it may sound very robotic. That's not how people behave. We have unpredictability in a good measure - and it is triggered by jealousy, laziness, tiredness, anger, disappointment, excitement and a whole host of emotions. Most of the time we are unthinking when we act, and then we scramble to set things right.

That's what makes our story endearing. He prepared well, took the test, and won. -- No fun at all.

Love.

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The title of the story

Dear M,

A single phrase can trigger a story - have you ever experienced that? You hear a forgotten proverb or a peculiar phrase used by a person and - a whole chain of events is set into motion. The entire story hinges on that phrase which you then recognise as the title of the story. No other title can be more apt.

But there are times when you do not know what the title could be: we always start with a working title, something we know isn't final, but we need it to get going. We cannot name it novel#1, of course. Not when you are constructing an entire world in earnest. So we start with something as mundane as Life's Like That or something.

And as we write, or when we look back after we write, or at some other point in time we have a revelation - and the title walks out of the darkness and into the light. Do you know what you should do when it happens? Take a pen, reach for a paper and jot it down. It is very important. The title does not make its appearance all the time. If you lose it, you may not find it. Another title may emerge in due course, but nothing will be as perfect as the one that had stepped out from the story when the time was right.

I lost a title that way, and learned a lesson.

Love.

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The Indian Language Thing

Dear M,

Do you know what British and American authors have that we Indians don't (or what we Indians have that they don't) - apart from the obvious English-comes-naturally thing? The fact that they (majority of the time) don't have to say he said in Hindi, she said in Bengali (unless they are writing a cross-cultural tale).

Out here, we are deeply curious about what language the characters use. Not that it matters, but you know it is a huge thing. There is this North Indian lady who visits a village deep inside South India. Communication is of utmost importance, and we Indians would naturally and immediately wonder how she would get her thoughts across. Did they speak in Hindi or English? Did she know their tongue? Or did they have to resort to sign language?

There are certain stories where this would not matter - say, we know that the setting is in a village, where they speak a certain language (and no outsiders appear). We don't have to keep saying that they said in this language. It is understood.

Again, it reappears when we write a contemporary story set in urban surroundings. You know how people converse now, a mix of English and Hindi and their own language. We could be truthful and write just as they speak, or we could write it all in English, and throw in an Arre or Yaar or Kano or Madi in it for effect.

I once attended this writing workshop where a guy read out a text he had written, a scene we were asked to create. He said he is comfortable imagining dialogs in Hindi. We nodded approvingly. That's fine. Then he read out his entire one paragraph dialog in Hindi. I mean, we were talking about English writing. If you write your dialogs in Hindi then you should probably write your entire story in Hindi. That's what I was thinking, but none of us said anything, we chuckled at the right places and smiled politely and left it at that.

Love.

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Write Like There's No Tomorrow

Dear M,

Frankly, what do we know about tomorrow? Does it exist for us at all? We don't know what it has in store for us. Better get our writing out there before it decides not to come.

If we postpone for tomorrow, we may never get a chance. And our masterpiece never became a masterpiece because we had left it uncreated in our mind, waiting for a day that had no intention of arriving.

Write like there is no day, no night; write like there is no one to ever read; write like it does not matter what you write or think; write like you are the best author of all times; write like you are a five year old picking at alphabets.

It is better to write like a five year old than not write at all. It is better to die writing than to die regretting the thousand words that could have been written.

If you are a writer, write to prove yourself.

Love.

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The Writer's Philosophy Comes at its Own Time

Dear M,

We pile everything we have into our story. Can't help; that's how we are. We have a bulk of knowledge that we wish to share. We have formed our own life's philosophy. We have our own views. And we tell it to the world using our medium of communication - our story. Our characters are living the life we envision.

We throw rocks and stones at them, we force them out of their comfort zones; we bring them to the crossroads and wait to see what they will do. We know what they should, but we don't know if they would choose that path. Their choice would depend on what we have built up so far. Would he break down and lose courage and turn and run away? Or would he close his eyes and dart forward into the dark oblivion?

Whatever he chooses, the action means something - it tries to speak the message, it tries to convey a philosophy.

I found that when I write the story the first time, putting the sequence of scenes together, none of this comes to my mind. I just write what happened. The philosophy emerges a little later. Sometimes after the whole story is written. A few weeks later. The scenes come back. What was I trying to say there? She was behaving just as we do every day in life - lost and wandering, in a general direction, north by north-west, because that's where she figured she was destined to be, waving down whatever vehicle that came her way, getting down where she thought she was closest to it. The lesson had to be brought out there. But it would not come with the scene, though it is always in our mind and it is the philosophy we live by and it is the theme we are trying to convey with this story; it would surface much later.

I am finding my little snippets of philosophy in my writing now, in a novel I wrote three years ago. Yes, it took me three years to bring out the message. It is about time, I suppose.

Love.

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The Next Big Thing

Dear M,

Why would anyone believe in something they create? Like, say, a new product? The easiest, most thoughtless answer is, they are looking at the money it brings. A person who wrote a book very similar to Chetan Bhagat. He/She thought he/she had a good story to tell. He/She thought people who like Bhagat would like it. True, he/she was inspired by him. But for the reader, it is "Bhagat-inspired-attempt-at-making-money." Seriously. People say that casually, people who haven't written a word in their life.

Money is attractive of course, but we all know it does not come easy. We envision this product (any product, this is not necessarily about writing) and we think, this might work. People might find this useful. If this clicks, it could make people's lives easier.

If people start using it (the product, whatever it is), and if it does make their lives easier, the thought creeps into our mind - it's my product. I am the person behind it. It was my idea. I think that feeling is worth more than what a few thousand dollars could bring.

It is this feeling that we seek, every day. We bring people together to make a product happen, this idea to take shape, this innovative "next big thing" to take the world by storm.

Love.

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Coaching the Champion

Dear M,

You don't have to be a champion to become a coach. Most of our famous sports personalities have coaches whose name we, the ordinary Indians, don't even know. Yet they are the people who have brought out the strengths in the sportsmen and sportswomen.

These coaches need not be national level or international level performers. They have experience; in some cases, very good experience. They know the tricks of the game even though they aren't brilliant at it themselves. They cannot practise what they preach; they help others practise. They show what the performers sometimes cannot see.

Every artist can be a coach. A person who talks about the art need not be the winner; he can be the guide.

They are the experts, from the coaching point of view. They are not the champions on the field, they are the champions who make the champions.

Love.

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Character Study for the Day

Dear M,

There are some very interesting people in this world - each unique in their own way, but you can still classify them into groups. Observing them is rewarding - you really can make a story out of a person.

For instance, there are people who don't show a lot of emotion. Very rarely do you see them frown. You believe they haven't learned how to scowl. Their anger is not explosive. They would smile and laugh and look thoughtful, but within certain boundary conditions. There are some who look arrogant because they are so controlled, then there are some who are gentle and calm and caring and gentlemanly/lady-like. They always say the right things, do the right things. Nothing overboard. They don't ask unnecessary questions. Casual talk is also within the realm of decency. You start to wonder, they are so polished outside, how might they be inside? What made them so unemotional? There - you have your story.


I once approached a woman at work for something. She had been on leave for a few days. I noticed that she looked tired, but thought nothing of it. She responded to my query as sweetly and patiently as she always did, and I returned. Later that day, I heard from co-workers that she had had a miscarriage. Nothing of it had showed in her behaviour. No pain, no sadness, nothing. I had never for a moment suspected how devastated she must have been beneath her calm exterior.

Love.

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Writing a Book from a Movie

Dear M,

What do you think of book adaptations?

Some match our expectations so perfectly. One example of a great book made into a great movie is To Kill a Mockingbird. There are also poor adaptations and better adaptations. Yeah, sometimes we say the book was better; sometimes that the movie is better.

What exactly happens when the book is turned into a movie? Many pages get squeezed dry. You cannot have all the scenes in a two-hour movie. You need to decide what you want, to keep the core of the story intact. There will be a lot of philosophy in the book that can be reduced to one or two lines of dialog; a lot of characters will be wiped out of existence. Essentially, the book gets shrunk into a film, but the visual effect gets enhanced - because reading about "a blue sky" and seeing a blue sky create completely different impressions on our mind. And the background score adds the heartbeat to it, of course.

Now think about the other way - imagine you are writing a book based on a movie. Each scene has so much you can write about, so much detail you can skip or incorporate, so many thoughts that run through the protagonists' minds that no one gets to hear in the movie, so many slices of authorly wisdom you can dole out to the readers. If you really concentrate, you can also bring the background score into the writing.

Isn't that what we, writers, are doing (or trying so hard to do)? We have a movie in our mind. Directed by us, seen only by us. It's our job to expand - or adapt - it into a book for the world to perceive.

Love.

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Leave Arranging for the End

Dear M,

I have been working on something for the past week - no, I am not talking about writing-work, I am talking about work-work. So this work involves a lot of research and gathering of info and arranging them. Everything is available, in different forms. I get them if I open a document or call someone up. My job was to collect all that was required and get them into some order.

I spent two days thinking about how to arrange them. It is true that I got a fair idea about it just by thinking. But when I started doing, I began to face obstacles. On the third day, I let the arrangement go - and I began to just dump what I had into a "work-area". Imagine a lot of crumbled paper lying on the floor around you.

Once I had most of them in whatever format in front of me, picking them up and arranging was (or seemed) easier.

I am sure you are clever enough to know what I am arriving at. No matter how much time you spend thinking about all the wonderful things you want to write, when you actually start writing, it is a whole new ball game. Thinking is a very good preparation indeed, but if that's all you do, how will you ever get anywhere? The best way is to just write what you have in mind as it comes out, and worry about ordering and arranging them, later.

Love.

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Here, you are all alone.

Dear M,

When you are working for someone, there will be (most of the time) a next level or a peer person who can review or approve your work, or someone to whom you can talk about the business. This could be a good thing or bad thing depending on how you see it.

In novel-writing, the next level person is either the editor or the agent or the publisher. Not the same, eh? Even if you ask a friend or spouse to read it, they are merely the readers, the consumers. Those people are like your first beta testing customers - they reject you or accept you (or politely report a lot of issues). They are not your partners in business. They are (often) not the people to whom you say, Why don't we try this?

Which means, you are pretty much on your own: the decisions, the execution, the verification, the review, the rework, all are your own. You are the boss, the employee, the builder, the verifier, the first user. You are building a product all on your own - not knowing if the market wants it, not knowing if there is anyone out there who would be interested, not knowing the ABCs of business mathematics. You're the winner if it catches, you're the loser if it tanks. You're the one everyone applauds, you're the one everyone ignores.

Wow, if that doesn't sound lonely enough.

Love.

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There's no Failure in Writing

Dear M,

Everyone makes a big deal of "succeeding" as a writer. But the truth is, everyone who makes an attempt and is sincere about it, dedicated and determined as much as they can be, is a success.

I do not mean in a philosophical way. Think about it. Basically all we want (at the start) is to get published. We think that's the "success" we are talking about. But if we get published by a small-time publisher who doesn't have time or resource to sell our books, then it is not a success. And if we did get noticed by a big publisher and the readers reject us (or worse, ignore us) then we aren't a success. If we did get a tremendous response to our first book, and the second was a disaster (the comparison is unavoidable), then we aren't a success.

See? Like someone said, failure is inevitable. The only question is How and Where. And the more important question is, What do you do next?

In the beginning, we don't see beyond the first step. It is not a success, it is perhaps a milestone. It is only a landmark by the side of the road. The highway stretches far far beyond that.

The only failure that we can bestow on ourselves is giving up. The only award we can promise ourselves is the strength we attain after crossing the failures and still going on. The only happiness we can offer ourselves is the one we get when we look back and see the struggles we have endured. The only success we achieve (and the best one I can think of) is being proud of what we've written, not because someone said it is good, but because we feel that we have created something wonderful.

Have I said anything you haven't heard so far?

Love.

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The Waiting Game

Dear M,

One of the most difficult things in life is waiting for a response - waiting for someone to turn up, waiting for a letter or an email, waiting for a call, waiting for pretty much anything.

In the world of writing and publishing, this waiting is in plenty. At every stage, and in between stages, when work is in progress, every day, we are waiting for something.

If we aren't waiting for an idea to strike, we are waiting for us to come up with the best way to represent the idea. If we aren't waiting to finish writing, we are waiting to finish editing. We are waiting for the day we can throw the damn manuscript out somewhere and forget about it forever. (Yes, repeated cycles of writing and editing make us hate our manuscript so much that we can't see how a publisher is ever going to like it.)

Then, assuming that we finish our rounds of crippy-crapping the MS, we send it off to the editor. Then we wait. And wait and wait. Then we begin to wonder if she had checked her emails in the last millennium? Had she received it? Had she forgotten about it? Should I remind her? Should I ping her? Should I call her up and scream at her?

Luckily before you do any of those (or, after you tone down and tone down until you are a small voice politely asking Hi, how's it going?) she gets back with the MS. After the editing stage (of several rounds of waiting) is over, and you hit the publisher or an agent, then the wait begins again. Again the same set of fears. This time, even more so - the publisher or agent is under no obligation (yet) to even take a second look at the MS. If they were blown out of their minds, they would have dashed back. They didn't. It could be anything.

My email had landed in the spam folder and they had emptied it by mistake.
They are sifting through the million emails, they haven't gotten to mine yet.
It's two months, they must surely have at least seen the query. Why haven't they sent a rejection note?
Maybe they have put it aside to read it again.
Or maybe they have sent it directly to trash in a burst of disgust.
At least send me a rejection mail to treasure.
Even better, send me an "accepted-and-hungry-for-more" notice.
Anything, my good publisher, anything, my good agent. Send me anything at all, dammit.

There is no getting past the waiting game. Unless we open a publishing house ourselves, and publish our own books.

Love.

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Tying the story with a rope

Dear M,

Some stories are skin deep, some live in flesh and blood. You can almost feel the veins and arteries pushing against you, the nerves telling you tales.

Having recently had the occasion to encounter both one after the other, the difference is so pronounced in my eyes. The first, the skin-deep kind, commonly referred to as "light", "quick read", etc. was funny and a straightforward narration of events without a lot of in-depth analysis about anything. The focus was on the events and the dialogs.

In the case of the second, it was also a straightforward narration of events. But it was fixed to things I know like a floating balloon tied to the ground with a rope. There was always a comparison to something I knew, an analysis, a detail that placed the story where I could sense it. Yes, that is why it was no light read. I had to toil through it, drink as much detail as I wanted to, bask in it, to make sure I was not missing anything.

We all dream of writing something like that, that makes the reader spell-bound. Either we do not try hard enough, or we are too shallow that we cannot produce profound stuff, that we end up with quick-read material. (And then we say, I like reading and writing light-read books that anyone can read and understand; I hate to read books that are award-winning type.) I think if we are ready to put some time in it and some thought into each, we could ground our stories to reality too, tie them up with rope so they do not fly away with the wind.

Love.

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Writer, Writeress

Dear M,

While writing about writing, I have often been grateful that there is no feminine form of 'writer' - imagine using "writer/writeress" whenever you want to be gender-perfect? ('Author' is going the same way; some people still try to bring up 'authoress', but the word is clearly dying.) But Wiktionary (and other Google-directed places) tells me that there used to be such a word as 'writeress'.

At times I think two separate words would convey that a writer and his methods are clearly different from that of a writeress. 

A guy writer I know, very dedicated in his passion, writes for an hour every morning before he leaves for work. After he gets back from work in the evening, on the days that he is not hanging out with friends, he writes for an hour or two before bed. Apart from buying provisions every week, he does not concern about the way the house functions or the kitchen requirements because his wife takes care of those.

A woman writer I know, gets up early so that she can prepare breakfast and pack her children's lunch, and has no time to write in the morning. Then she leaves for her work. In the evening, after she gets home, she attends to her children and the dinner arrangements in the house, and starts writing after her children go to bed.

Another woman writer I know does not go out for work. After her morning chores are done and her family has left, she writes for a couple of hours, then prepares her lunch, watches TV, takes a short nap and then returns to her writing. This continues for a few hours, before she prepares dinner. After dinner, she reads a book and goes to sleep.

Another writer dude of mine lives alone and cooks his food. He does not compromise with ready-to-eat food. He loves to cook. His meals are his muse, so to speak. He has no pattern to his writing. He writes when he can, where he can. (But when it is time to show us the final product it would be unbelievably impeccable, we would not be able to connect his unruly writing methods to the story in our hands.)

This isn't every man's story. This isn't every woman's story. This isn't every writer's story. This isn't every writeress' story. But I guess there is a pattern in the priorities and the management of life with writing.

Love.

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What inspires you to write?

Dear M,

I was asked this question again - what inspires me to write?

I haven't yet figured out the answer to give. I know my own answer, but that is not what people want to hear. They want to hear that a writer is inspired to write by a waterfall, or the skies, or the wind. Or a child or love or sadness. I do not know why such an answer brings a twinkle to their eyes, but it does. I don't know why it is thrilling to hear someone is a writer, but it is. There are so many questions they ask. The writer, writhing in the centre of their attention, does not know what are the right answers to give - the answers that would make them happy and make them stop asking. So, the writer, in this case yours truly, prepares a set of answers. The proper answers that could pass without invoking more drastic questions, answers that don't make them write the writer off. Safe answers - like a shrug or a smile or a word no one can hear or a long sentence the listener cannot make head or tail of. Something like - "Oh I am inspired by many things, by many things I do not mean those - well but we aren't talking about the kind of things that inspire in general - we are talking of this specific instance - for example our conversation could inspire - not exactly in the way we think - yet it could inspire - oh if we are talking about fiction - say, short stories, pretty much a leaf by the side of the road could be inspiring - though I like to think that the leaf has already been inspired by the wind - but in the case of a novel - "
Take my word for it. The person who asked this question would have vanished in no time.

Love.

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Changes and the New Year

Dear M,

Every year I try to ignore this whole concept of New Year Day - I wonder what's so special about it, why should it matter, how is it going to be different from the previous days or years? And yet every year I find that something changes at the edge of December, and despite all my efforts to pretend that everything is normal and unchanging, a positive note comes up from somewhere and lures me into a world of unparalleled optimism.

Such a thing has happened this year too, a bunch of new things have come knocking on my door over the holidays, and I can't close my eyes to the fact that my life is going to change again this year.

This could mean a whole lot of tumbling-over of things in life, priorities getting reshuffled, routines getting tossed about, and a whirlwind of changes. Anxiety, apprehension, worries. But all in a good way.

Happy New Year!

Love.

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