Freewheeling

Dear M,

Sometimes it is such a relief to write what comes to mind, without bothering about the order or sequence or chronology or depth of characters. Throwing preparations to the wind. I don't know if it is a good idea or if it is anything at all; but I don't mind.

Maybe the reader will be disappointed, maybe the reader will think it has no convincing plot, no amazing characters, no colourful premise. But who cares? - the author doesn't, because the author is enjoying the writing of it, and when the author does that, nothing else matters.

That's the kind of book I am working on now. Just jotting in scenes here and there, with appropriate titles and nothing else. No worry about whether this happens before that or that happens before something else.

There is no strain in writing, no stretching of memory, no papers flying around the room with important notes on them. No planning, no discipline, no setting aside fixed time daily. No pressure.

Just writing when it strikes. Sometimes two days a week, sometimes every day with hours stolen from work. Sometimes just one line in a day. 20K in one month. Not an amazing pace, but enough, for me.

And definitely not the kind of thing an author with credentials would approve of. I can see you there, over yonder, shaking your head at me. It's bound to fail, you think.

Who cares, my dear friend, who cares. Not I. Not today.

Love.

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The Wikipedia approach to writing

Dear M,

I am a huge fan of Wikipedia. Apart from the fact that it gives me a lot of info about things (I am not interested in going into the right-or-wrong discussion regarding Wikipedia), it also serves another purpose, in my eyes. The way Wikipedia presents topics, classifies them and highlights the important facts - to me that appears to be a good method to use when we are preparing to work on a novel.

It is always a good idea to identify chapters prior to writing. I know several writers who just write in a flow and break the chapters down afterwards, but some people prefer to prepare a chapter-wise summary for the entire novel before actually plunging into the writing.

And if you look at Wiki you get an idea. An intro, a summary, a cast of characters, list of casualties, (okay - maybe not) in short, a quick highlight of each chapter might be a good idea as a part of the homework.

Once we do that, we can weave scenes in, to each relevant chapter, we don't have to collate them into an incomprehensible mass.

Because, however much we think we know the story, trust me, writing a novel is a long journey, and somewhere, some times, we lose track of threads, some fine, important threads, and we need notes to bring us back into the game. The more organized, the better. As I tell myself every day, to no avail.

Love.

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Merging Plots

Dear M,

I have found the solution. It's perhaps not the best solution, but I am feeling quite adventurous today, and it's perhaps time for a little experimenting. I'm referring to the problem of the surge of stories.

A couple of seemingly brilliant story ideas had been shadowing me for a while now, and I made elaborate notes on both, unsure which one I need to work on next. (After I go back and finish the older one, of course.) The truth is that though both appeared promising, neither had enough material to last the 80k or 100k test. Without having a strong premise, it was not a good idea to plunge into it. There is a third, independent storyline that has made its appearance, to further complicate matters. If only we could finish our masterpieces at the speed of thought itself.

Anyway, today the splendid solution came up - two of those plots could be merged. It may or may not work, the 'splendidness' remains to be seen. There aren't a lot of obvious overlaps between the two, yet there are certain areas that could be reworked on so that a merger can be signed.

I hate to admit I am not overly excited about it. The result should not look as though a half-apple and a half-orange were pasted together in a desperate attempt to make a mango.

Love.

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Back up your work

Dear M,

In the early days of my acquaintance with the computer, I used to forget to save my work. I should also say that those were the early days of computer in my neighbourhood too - which means, not many had heard of such things as UPS, and a power failure meant your unsaved work was gone. After losing my precious slowly-typed-in lines several times, I learned to do Alt+F+S.

Now we do not have that issue where power failure could cause our beloved work to be lost, however there still hangs above our heads the possibility of a hard drive crash, or something similar where we could lose our data.

Today, we have so many alternatives to keep our work safe. If you say you lost your 75,000 words of your novel because of a system crash, no one is going to be sympathetic. No one's sympathy is going to help anyway.

Software like MS Word have the option to save your data as you work. In recent versions, auto-recovery is enabled by default, and in other versions, there is an option to "auto-save" your work every few minutes. Enable it.

Use an external hard disk or a pen drive. Keep saving the entire folder of your work into it, once or twice a week. Just dump the whole thing there.

Find an online location like Dropbox, and sync your folder.

Take care that you know where the latest work is - keeping different versions in different places could lead to confusion and eventually, madness.

Love.

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How to figure out if your story is any good

Dear M,

Every idea we come up with for a story need not be great. But when the inspiration comes, we do not know if it is going to be good or bad. Naturally any idea that strikes us feels superior to any other idea that has hit anyone else on this planet so far. (It's like a What An Idea Sirji moment.)

There is a way to find out if the new story idea or our execution of it is any good. It may not be a foolproof method, but having some way to figure out is better than having none.

I began writing a story a month or so ago. The idea had been hovering around for a long time now, then suddenly it occurred to me how I could present it. Who was going to be the protagonist, how is he going to uncover it, what was the POV, etc. As always, it felt like a flash of brilliance. So I quickly made notes and arranged things in chronological order and made short character sketches.

Then I plunged into the writing. I knew it was going to be a long story, more than 20 pages. My stories don't usually go beyond 10, or 15. But I figured this was one story that needed space. I had to take the reader through a lot of stuff. So I kept at it, day after day. Then I skipped it for one day, because I had to edit the synopsis for my completed novel. Then I skipped it the next day when something else came up. Soon it was four days since I had written a word on the short story. Then the gap became one week. When it became ten days, I stopped short and asked myself what was going on.

I had lost interest - was what had happened. I did not feel excited when I read the story, any more. I did not feel the urge to go on. It was not driving me now. If I, as the writer, had lost interest in the story, how would the reader find it? No one is holding a gun against his head to make him read.

I have been writing stories long enough to know the difference between a story that does not allow me to rest until I finished writing it, and one that kills me of boredom while writing it.

So if you are bored writing it, and if you try to keep away from it as much as possible, if you don't feel excited when you read it after a gap, then the story isn't going to excite the reader either. Better try to rewrite it or trash it, and move on. Otherwise we will be stuck there for weeks or months. The effort will not be wasted. Good story ideas never leave us. At the right moment, they will return to haunt us again. And this time, we may get it right.

Love.

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Writer's Block is only an excuse not to write

Dear M,

Writer's Block is another way of saying it is not my priority. I know we get stuck at times, in the middle of our story, or we find that we have run out of ideas for a new story. It's only a temporary glitch. We just step over it and continue, and come back to it when the time is ripe.

But most often, most writers complain of writer's block when they want to do something other than sit and write. A writer is always writing - either on paper or in his mind. If he isn't, then he is not completely a writer. If he is not writing in his mind when he is doing something else, he will not have anything at his fingertips when he sits down and voilà! - writer's block.

We don't sit down and think about what we want to write. It doesn't work that way. The writing is always there, the thoughts and words are always ready and turning and churning in the mind. We have to sometimes grab any piece of paper that we can find to note it down, lest the beautiful thing be lost. Eventually, what we get down to paper is only a small part of what was boiling in the labyrinths of our mind. When we sit down, we are only opening the gates for the flood to gush out, frothing and screaming. That's how writers are made, and not by opening the gates and wonder if there is a flood rising somewhere nearby.

We are not writers because we sit down once in a while and think, Okay, what am I going to write today?
We are writers because we run to the chair and jot down what has been formed in our mind hours ago. We are writers because we constantly ask ourselves, I have this wonderful story I want to write, when in the world can I shove my a$$ into a chair?
And when we have that urge that kills us, we find ourselves a chair.

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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Take a step back

Dear M,

We all love to believe that the stuff we write at the first attempt is as close to perfection as possible. While it may be true in some cases, there will always be a few tweaks here and there that could improve the text. And if we are focussed on the matter at hand (for instance, the way I am now engrossed in this post), we tend to miss the wider perspective. We know and learn a lot of things in life. But when we write, many of those keep out of our sight. It is not easy to bring them into our vision - if we do not know what we are looking for.

The answer is to never be hasty about our writing. Unless it is something that needs to be submitted in the next five minutes, we should take our time to revisit it - as many times as possible. Any person who has tried his/her hand at writing will know that if we take a break from it and return a little later (sometimes hours later, sometimes days), we always without fail, find something to modify or add to. Take a step back, and look at it again. Fresh images would jump out at you.

And as for the posts in this blog, I write it in the morning so that I can revisit it in the evening before it gets published. There has always been something to change in the text, whenever I do that.

Love.

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A writer is someone who finishes her projects

Dear M,

Among the many challenges of being a writer, a significant one is not knowing which project to focus on. At the beginning of her writing career, the writer is working on one novel, has completed three short stories and has a few ideas for one more novel, etc. There is no confusion as to which one of these to work on. She may stop the novel for a week so that she can finish that short story that has been burning a hole in her head.

But as time passes, and there are more and more unfinished stories and holes in the head, it becomes difficult to decide which to work on. Should I work on that novel which is in first draft, or the new one in my mind? Should I polish the short stories so that I can try to get them published somewhere? Should I start on new projects or edit the old ones? And when do I start querying for my novel #1?

The correct answer is that there is no correct answer. But if you leave your novel #1 unfinished, you will never be able to let go of it. If you start novel #2, you may be tempted to leave it half way through because a third novel idea has started knocking on your door (and it sounds better than the one you are working on!). And short stories have no manners at all. They keep popping all over the place, unmindful of the time of day or the day of the week. How do you manage all these?

A writer is a person who finishes her projects.

Having two hundred and fifty five unfinished stories does not make you a writer. For all I care, they might be unfinished and unwritten and still in your head, and not on paper. Prioritise. Find out how you can finish each, one by one. It could even be possible to edit one MS in the mornings and write the new one in the evenings. I would not say that is a good idea - switching between stories could baffle us - but, whatever works for you.

It is important to finish, if you are serious about the writing. No one - repeat, no one - likes an unfinished manuscript.

And I look at my Folder full of manuscripts in different levels of completion and I repeat, No one likes work that is incomplete.

Love.

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The Pram in the Hallway

Dear M,

Surely you have heard the controversial comment: "The pram in the hallway is an enemy of good art". Unkind as it is to the baby, I like to (as usual) believe that there is more to it that the reference to the pram.

Mothers would agree that working on creativity when there is a baby demanding your attention can be challenging as well as frustrating, because you do not get the time to spend on your work as much you would like to, and when the burst of creativity surges in, you cannot leave your child and attend to it. You will have to store it in your head and let it out later.

I know many writers (who are not Moms) who do not have the luxury of writing when they want to. They have to devote their attention to other very important things - as demanding as a crying infant - and squeeze time between these to attend to their passion. Illness (their own as well as that of their spouses or parents or siblings), taking care of aged parents, a 24 X 7 profession, a job that requires them to travel back and forth almost every day, are just some of them. Those are the prams in their hallway. So the phrase is not strictly limited to mothers.

I don't say that the pram (or its metaphorical reference to other demands of life) is an enemy of good art. It probably does keep the artist away from his work. But in a way, it contributes to his creativity. It helps him to think. If he is always bent over his work, he loses the wider view. He needs to step back and think, once in a while. He might not do it on his own. When the pram demands his attention, he has to take a break. The issues in his life might make their way into his book because he is writing about people who face and tackle difficult situations, not about the ones who are luxuriously locked up in their rooms writing, sleeping and eating all the time. Let's face it: it's the pain that brings out the best artist in you.

The pram in the hallway is not an enemy of good art, instead it is actually a stimulant for creativity.
That's what I like to believe, anyway.

Love.

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Time Management

Dear M,

Whenever we find that we are unable to do something that others did or do, we try to find excuses as to why we're different from them.

By now you have figured out that I am unable to manage my time and I am trying to place the blame on someone else. Yes, that is a good summary. The only reason I am able to write (almost) every day is that all good writers used to do it. If they could do it, I should do it. There is no other way.

But the last week had been crazy busy again. I am not quite clear on whether I had my meals on time, heck, whether I had them at all, and my sleep has been fitful and ill-timed. I think I did a whole chunk of my work in sleep. Anyway in that chaos, I did not write one day. Someone was at my neck every hour, and I just couldn't. And today, the race continues as soon as the thirty minutes allotted to this blogpost is over. On such days there is a severe battle between my better sense and my other sense. I don't know which is which, though. One told me that I need my sleep and that the writing can be postponed for a couple of days till this madness was over. One (the same or different, I have no idea) told me that this madness won't be over for a while so better write while I still could. One told me that if you can sit up and do something, better finish that damn work - after all, you get paid for it. You have some responsibility to the people who pay you. One told me that they pay me doesn't mean that I have to kill myself to earn that money. One told me to think of all the writers who did their work and still spent an hour or so every day to write.

That stopped me in my tracks. The famous writers. They could write every day, no matter the situation. Work, festivals, guests, family, health, almost nothing would deter them. If they could do it, why can't I? My tired sense, before it fainted, said that the famous writers of the last century did not have to work day in and day out. They worked fixed hours a day. They did not slog over computers and were not expected to go home and complete the work and send it today. They did not work like I did. I guess. Their work is not like mine. Their principles and discipline will not work for me. My time management will be different from theirs.

A lot of reasons, excuses. The bottom line? I didn't write. Now my time is up and I have to rejoin the race before someone figures out I have been wasting my time, again. A waste of time for them, a precious piece of writing for me.

Love.

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NaNoWriMo - The Crazy Writing November

Dear M,

It's October already, and we are less than one month away from NaNoWriMo - the National Novel Writing Month. (The 'National' in the name is misleading. It has been an international activity for many years now, but the name has a rhythm, I guess that's why no one wanted to change it. Besides, writers don't give much attention to titles except when it is the title of their own book.).

I have participated in NaNoWriMo twice, and the only thing I can say is, until you take part - in all sincerity and honesty and dedication - you will not know what it means. It sounds very simple in theory. Complete 50K of words in your current Work-in-progress or a new one in thirty days. Which comes to 1.667 words a day. Which translates to roughly 5 or 6 pages a day. Now you get the hint. Creative folks know that creative juices don't flow in five or six pages every day. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Many days it will be more like 1 or 2 pages, sometimes it is like ten. If you know this, then you are ready for NaNoWriMo.

However, to get the best out of NaNoWriMo, a good amount of groundwork is required. That is, if you are serious about writing. The best way to approach NaNoWriMo is to prepare months in advance. A large percentage of people who participate in NaNoWriMo begin to think of "what to write" on Oct 31st. If that is the case, my recommendation is, don't do it.

Why did the concept of NaNoWriMo come up in the first place? Because writers are such a lazy lot. They try their best to not write. Can't blame them though, it is difficult to be self-motivated, every day of every year. There are a hundred reasons that could take us away from writing. However, only one to continue writing: that I must finish it. We are happy that we have those hundred excuses to run away from writing. The point is, what might take us five months to finish, we are attempting in one. Discipline is the keyword.

A novel needs so much preparation before the actual writing: understanding the plot to as much detail as possible, understanding and developing the various characters, even the one who comes to give tea to the protagonist and vanishes after that one scene (well, not so much, I guess, but that is the idea). Every little detail needs to be worked out beforehand. Even without these, a novel can be written. But when you send it out to your editor or publisher, they are going to tell you, your novel isn't good. I don't think I need to clarify any more!

By a strange coincidence, today when I came to my desk determined to write about NaNoWriMo, voila - there was an email from NaNoWriMo folks about it. I have decided not to participate this year (though I will miss the madness) because I have to pay attention to a couple of other unfinished projects. But I will be setting my own goals in November to ensure that these unfinished businesses are attended to. A writer who does not finish his projects will never be an author.

Love.

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Focus, Distraction and the Effect of Social Media

Dear M,

The lure of social media is the bane of a writer.

While it does give us tremendous amounts of information and helpful tips and positive advice every day, one could get lost in it, for hours. As I was saying yesterday, some people are very good at multi-tasking (as they claim), so they manage to work while social networking.

As for me, when I am networking, I am networking. When I am working, I am working (only sometimes do I take a peek at the social media updates). Mostly it is the work that suffers; the social space doesn't notice if I am gone for a few days!

It is very difficult to pull oneself away from the continuous stream of conversation and news and jokes and abuse and pointless discussion and everything else. Truth be told, these are interesting. Just like a daily show that we know is non-sense, but we watch nonetheless.

In the olden times (meaning until a decade or so ago), people used to be able to focus when they were at their desk and their door was closed. Now if we are alone, we are tempted to just check for a second to see what the rest of the virtual world was doing. And the world is there, all the time, day and night, ready to entertain.

The only way out is to treat yourself the way you would treat a child: allow a fixed time for television, and not permit any pining for it later. It is difficult when it is our own self, isn't it? It is a good idea to reward ourselves with social media time if we worked on our MS for two hours - or something. Good Doggie! Now go network for a while, you'll get a juicy bone.

I have seen writers update every minute as to how far they have progressed on their MS, all the time. I can understand when you're doing NaNoWriMo, but every other day, hour, minute? Annoying. And a waste of everyone's time. Besides being a huge waste of binary information getting transmitted all across the world. Imagine.

That's a phase. Everyone does that, because they think their life is important to everyone else, that if they write an autobiography today, it will be sold out tomorrow. But the older you get, the more time you spend on the social surfaces, the wiser you get, and you realise that the quieter you are, the more people appreciate you. (The best appreciation some folks can give you is to ignore you!)

So, the point is, allow a certain time for social networking, don't punish yourself by promising to stay away from it for two months. That's utter foolishness. (You won't last two days, and then you will end up spending a couple of days full-time on networking to get over the withdrawal.) And when you can't resist the urge to check, just check and close. It will serve you right - you will realise that there was nothing worth checking, and you were only giving in to a mad impulse.

Love.

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Focus

Dear M,

Some people can work in any kind of environment. (Just as some people can sleep in the middle of any kind of noise or light). They will be able to focus on their work, maybe make a funny comment or two to the others, listen to what their friends are saying, rock with the music, and all the time, do a lot of productive work.

Some people need music to work; indeed, some need a certain type of music to work - any other kind would distract them. Some people work best in silence.

I am one of the last. If I play my favourite music in the system, I will begin to sing along with it or rock with it or dream about a thousand things the music reminds me of, and before I know it, a couple of hours have passed and I haven't done a single line worth of work. If there is a film playing nearby, my ears will be tuned to the different suggestive sounds and every single dialog and the background score that flow in - even if the movie is playing in the next room.

Really. I am so easily distracted that sometimes I wonder I do get to finish my work at all. Knowing your enemy is half the battle won. (I'm sure there is a saying very close to that, but can't recall). I know that background noise isn't going to help me, so I stay away from it as much as I can. If I want to listen to music, I do it when my work is done (or the day's goal is achieved) or when I am doing my chores. My work area is at the farthest possible corner from the TV. I watch TV when I am having my meals (though that is generally not a healthy recommendation). I follow a routine where my working time does not overlap the time when there is a lot of noise around the house.

This is again, a part of the discipline we develop as writers. The writing is important. More important than anything else in life (but don't tell anyone I said so). The rest of our life is filled with distractions and things (and people) that keep us away from our writing. Prying ourselves away from those is not easy all the time. We could get projected as rude, callous, absent-minded, careless, forgetful and arrogant.

I think our writing life and the rest of it are mutually exclusive events. They cannot overlap. Each cannot understand the other. You're the only common factor between the two, and you're going to have to live two lives. Like managing the wife and the mistress. Every art form has that limitation, that strength. Two lives that cannot overlap. It is easy to lose oneself within the one and forget the other.

Love.

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Procrastination

Dear M,

People think writers are a permanently inspired lot - that they sit down and write every day and keep churning out book after book like they have nothing better to do. Many successful writers are more or less like that, but I think that is the discipline that they develop. Not because they don't want to postpone the writing, but because they know the day they do postpone, they have lost.

One of the easiest things is to get inspired to write. Everyone is inspired to write a few novels, every day. If all those books got written and published, there would be a book explosion rather than a population explosion or a garbage explosion on this planet. Luckily, many people do not get past the inspiration, many others don't get past the first ten pages, and some others don't get past the first draft or survive the first rejection.

But the ones who persevere, daily fight the fiercest battle of writing - procrastination. Have I spelled that right? What a horrid word. Procrastination.

We all have beautiful stories to tell. But writing it down in the form it should be written, or editing it to perfection, or re-writing it so that it reads the way we saw it in our mind, all those take so much of effort - days and weeks and, sometimes, years of effort. There is no other way but to work on it. It is so much easier to think, I will do it tomorrow.

We have urgent work, we have family responsibilities, we need to sleep, we need to travel, we are feeling sick, we badly need a break from this tiresome writing - there is no end to the excuses we can find. If we cannot break free of those, we will never finish it. And if we never finish it, we are not worthy of being called writers.

The other side of the story is that unless we have some encouragement, we cannot be motivated to write. If we have a publisher nagging us (oh, doesn't that sound sweet!) or an agent who is awed by our writing skills, it is difficult to keep the fire burning. It is much easier for the fire to die out.

I read a tweet recently that "A page a day is a book a year." Certainly not as simple as that, but yes, a page a day is an achievable goal, even allowing for emergencies. Isn't it?

Love.

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Discipline isn't easy during holidays!

Dear M,

So much for discipline! You can just step out the door and glance upwards and you will see my great big theory of discipline flying out the window.

I am one hour late already with this letter - and I have only begun writing it. I should have written it about twelve hours ago. (That's what my discipline dictates.) Well, what do you know - long weekends and festival holidays do that to people. I have always wanted to be true to Hemingway and Stephen King and all others who insist on writing for a certain period of time (or a certain number of words / pages) every day. They lock themselves up and write every day, even on Christmas when their whole clan has gathered. Ordinary folks like us do not have that luxury. If I so much as imagine myself doing that when "vishesh mehman" are at home, I start rolling all around, laughing. No, forget festivals or holidays, I cannot lock myself up if anyone comes, any day. There is no such thing as saying hello and getting back to my writing. But some day, I hope, some day...

In the meantime, it is better to give in quietly because such things do happen - your big plans of writing at a certain time are tossed to the wind because loving relatives choose that time to visit or we are too tired after a hectic week/end. If we try to resist it, we'll only end up more frustrated. And if you are like me, all the pent up frustration escape out elsewhere and the victims are left wounded and scarred. If it is not possible, it is not possible. Live with it. Try to make up for it the next day. But don't kill yourself doing it. Because you need to be alive if you want to finish that book. Simple.

Love.

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Making Time to Write

Dear M,

I have been very busy the past two months. Very busy is pretty much an understatement, going confusedly crazy would be closer to it. If we did not need so much sleep in our lifetime, we could have managed ourselves better. No, I take that back: if we did not have to sleep, we would take up more work to fill in twenty four hours, and more. I don't know if any other species neglects themselves (and finds satisfaction from it) the way we do.

I was reading an article on the web last evening about finding (making) time to write between our regular career and other lifely matters - how people have managed to spend an hour every day to write, how amidst the din of normalcy, writers find their voice, etc. Our professions are important, we need them to sustain our life. Writing, until we become so good at it as to earn from it, does not do much to contribute to our sustenance. It probably helps to keep our sanity together - on second thoughts, these days my sanity is on a downward spiral thanks to my literary pursuits. But I digress (as usual). We cannot abandon our people or ignore their needs just because we call ourselves writers. Not yet, but maybe some day.

A few months ago, distressed that my regular job was keeping me from writing as much as I wanted to, I took a month's leave from work. I decided that I was going to finish this darn writing and editing that had been pestering me for long. I was excited about it, you know. This time, I was going to nail it, and there would be no more regrets, I promised myself.

The first week of leave went well - I wrote like I had never written before, ten continuous hours of writing, with breaks only for food and water and basic needs. In the evening, I took some time off for a walk, to refresh myself. I was happy - and that is an understatement too.

The second week started slow, I was a little exhausted with the efforts of the first week. Delighted and enthusiastic and highly motivated, but a little sleepy. I watched television and took more naps than before, but wrote for about eight hours or so. From there began the decline. In the days that followed, I showed up at my desk only when I felt guilty for wasting my precious leave. I managed to do what I wanted to by the end of the month, but it was mostly guilt that drove me.

I realised something that wise people have known for centuries: unless we are under pressure, we would not do anything. When I had my regular work, I would manage one hour every day to write. And that one hour would be very focussed, because I knew I would not be able to spend more than those sixty minutes. Some days I would be tired and let myself take rest, but the next day I would try to make up for lost time. I was under extreme duress, (and complaining like hell) and I was performing well without endangering my health. The progress I made was astounding. When the work pressure was taken off (and since there was no publisher-pressure), there was nothing to drive me - I had the feeling that I was given all the time in the world. Thirty days.

After I rejoined work (which I now appreciated more than I did earlier) I began to plan my time better. Weekends were pretty much completely dedicated to writing. Week days, I would write only three days, for two hours each. Any three days. The other two days I would rest. Maybe I would write one more day, but that was my choice. That way, I would not be killing myself writing, nor would I be neglecting the literature. Once in a while I take a day off and write all that I want to write. That one precious day-off would be completely committed to writing (or editing, whatever was the priority at hand).

That, simply put, works wonderfully well.

But I took another month from work to participate in NaNoWriMo, and that worked even better - I should tell you about it another time!

Love.

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The Importance of Discipline

Dear M,

I think this is a topic I should have spoken to you about first - the importance of discipline in writing. Anyone who is not prepared to lead a disciplined life with respect to writing, should stop aspiring to be a writer. Everything else comes after that. Discipline is as important - I dare say, more so - than skill and talent. It is tightly interwoven with hard-work.

I have already mentioned that unless you take writing seriously, you will never become a serious writer. You are a writer because you write. But you will never be exceptional. If your goal is to be an average writer then nothing else matters.

Among my "real" friends, no one takes writing as seriously as I do. Among my virtual (online) friends there are many. In fact I connected with them because they are writers. They are possibly more dedicated and involved in writing than I am. Some do not even have a day job, they get all the day to do their writing (for which I sometimes envy them). Many of them have fixed writing times, and more often than not, they succeed in not letting anyone disturb them.

Among my real friends, however, there are many who would like to publish the "next big" book. Their idea excites them, their dream probably drives them. They have come asking me for advice, because I am the only one in their circle who can claim to have some experience. They ask, "Give me some tips on how to write." I want to tell them about discipline. To the first few who asked, I did. Then I stopped. Now I reply, "There is only one tip: Sit down and write. Daily." They are clearly not pleased, they expect some short cuts that rip them right through the difficult writing part and come to rest in the best-seller part.

That is all there is to it, really. Sit down and write. Everything else comes afterwards. You decide how much you can write, or for how long. Daily. Either it is 500 words per day. Or it is for one hour every day. Or it is eight hours a week. Whatever works for you, taking into consideration all other priorities: family, career, responsibilities, emergencies. And during that fixed time you have set, do nothing else but write. No chores, no pending responsibilities, no work, no social media, no emails, no phone calls. After all, we aren't doing it for anyone else, we are doing it for ourselves. And for that very same reason, the fact that we are our own bosses, it is easy to procrastinate. My "next big book" friends tell me, I really can't find time to write. I have so many other things to do. I don't tell them, everyone does, but that is what I think.

I talk big about discipline, but I am not great on that front. My work hinders with my writing, my chores distract me, my pending responsibilities worry me. To disclose a secret, discipline was one reason why I started these daily letters. My goal is a minimum of 300 words every morning. That sets the pace, and in half an hour or one hour I have the feeling that I have achieved something. Even though I get nothing else done for the rest of the day! But the fact is that once this is done, I have energy and inspiration to run me through the rest of the difficult business.

So what if I am not perfect at it? At least I know and acknowledge its importance. And I strive towards it, though my work might suffer, my chores remain undone, my responsibilities are neglected, my people complain that I don't call them.
Which is the first step in attaining some semblance of discipline.

Love.

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