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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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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Preparing the script for a real life encounter

Dear M,

It happened again. I had set the scene. It was for an inevitable and unavoidable small encounter. The only uncertainty was when it would take place. It would not go beyond four days, as I knew so well. I had set my trap, is the more appropriate way of saying it.

The script was ready, scratched and rewritten and polished several times. It had to go this way. I had some taunting dialogs to deliver. A few words to convey with my eyes. A few questions, a frown, a chuckle at the end. For the responses, a few possibilities were worked out. If this, then that. If not, then-

I had thought of all ways it could go. I had a backup plan for the impromptu change in script. After all, I was the only person who knew this was theatre. We all script our drama daily, when we expect a scene. But this was beyond all that common sense decreed.

Trust me, the plan was impeccable.

You see, I was experimenting again with live subjects. The harmless experiments that they would not realise are experiments, and would slip out of their minds soon. But it would find its way to my work somewhere, somehow.

All this preparation, and yet I slipped. It happened on the evening of day three. I was ready for the evening scene and its possibilities, and I was also prepared for day three. There would have been a change of script if it had shifted to day four. But what I was not prepared for was my severe bout of exhaustion after a long day pretty much on the road. I just wanted to gobble my dinner and hit the pillow. I was at my unprepared best. That's when it happened.

The script slipped from the very first word that came out of my lips. The unexpected, surprised "Ah." From there it went south. I could salvage a little, but the main part was gone. This was not something I could try again for at least five or six months.

But I will not be giving up. I should be scripting a new scene soon, involving other innocent, unsuspecting victims who will be immortalised in my story, without their ever realising it.

Love.

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If it is all too easy...

Dear M,

If you do not understand even a bit of the loneliness and struggle that writing offers, then you haven't journeyed yet. If you have tasted them, then I assure you, it could only get a hundred-fold worse. Not for us is the glorified solitude, nor the rest after struggle. As far as I am concerned, there is no other side, when all this is over.

I rose today morning wondering why I plod on (and plot on!). Where does the energy come from? I fear it will give out, drain away. I recently read an author's quote, that creativity, just like life, is slipping away from us. Isn't that the truth?

When I say struggle, I am talking about a long struggle. Think Mandela and his Long Walk to Freedom. But we do not have a hundred like-minded people walking with us, who can give us strength when we are tired. Come to think of it, I think we do. We have the ghosts of authors past walking by our side. And they, that bunch of lonely people, know how to pull us to our feet and make us battle on.

There will come a day when a part of the struggle is over. But there will always be much of it left for us.

If it's all too easy, we are not on the right track.

No one can help us, you know. No one. The battle is ours alone. No one is going to help unless there is something in it for them. That's how the world works. Think about all the online back-scratching we do. We don't get any of that support out here as far as writing goes. It's a struggle like no other. Ten years or ten thousand hours, as the scientist said, for you to reach a place where you get noticed. The pedestal of an expert (or close enough). For some, it could take even more.

Every day we have to motivate ourselves. Tell ourselves tales, lull our brain to sleep, so as to keep it from thinking - for if it starts to contemplate, it will see this as a losing war. All statistics and all mathematics will tell our brain that this journey isn't going anywhere. Look at the facts, they will tell us.

As far as creativity is concerned, no amount of arithmetic or calculus can predict where it will go, where it will reach. And if rely on maths to project our path, we might as well give up before we are sucked in to the depths of despair.

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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Writing is like getting drunk

Dear M,

There's this joke I heard recently - "I get drunk when I am sad, I get drunk when I want to celebrate, I get drunk when I am bored, I get drunk when I have no reason, I get drunk when I want to get drunk."

Writing is like that to me. I don't need a reason to write. I want to write when I am sad, when I am happy, when I am bored, when I have nothing to do, and when I want to. It gives me a high. This might sound ridiculous to a person who hasn't experienced it, but the moment I start writing or thinking about what I had been writing, my mood changes, my spirits rise - in an instant, almost the way alcohol does.

A few days ago, all the efforts I had been putting on began to overwhelm me. Once it starts, it is like an avalanche, there is no stopping it. It gathers more and more as it rolls down until it is as huge as a mountain and plasters everything its path. I didn't know what to do. It is easy to become negative. Reversing the effect is hard work. Besides, people would not understand what you're so miserable about. They'll ask (sometimes rather sarcastically) "who has turned the switch on??" It's so sudden, and so inexplicable, and worse, there is nothing new - it is the same old miseries again.

I turned to writing - I was supposed to be doing something else, but I announced rather rudely that I wasn't doing it now. Then I opened my manuscript, the one I was editing and almost instantly, believe it or not, I began to feel better. I had written this. This is so beautiful (excuse me, but I often find my own writing beautiful when I read it after a while, and I like that feeling, it brings so much energy and motivation). Finishing something as small and simple as this blog would give me the much-required peace of mind too.

If all the drunkards in this world could turn to writing to get the same high, there would be no alcohol-addiction-related problems. Not that I would recommend that, but yeah, it sounds nice doesn't it?

Love.

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Talking to oneself

Dear M,

Something really embarrassing happened a few days ago - someone caught me speaking to myself.

That in itself isn't bad, I am sure we all do that now and then. But in my case it was a very advanced (and hopeless?) case. I had been at it, gesturing and whispering and smiling, for at least ten minutes (and I have no idea how much longer) before I realised that I was being watched. I can't say how shocked and ashamed I was, and how foolish I felt. How deep inside my own head was I that I forgot where I was? I laughed about it, of course, but it was a real jolt.

I know I told you yesterday that I have a five hour distance between my real and fictional world. That's what I thought, really. I thought there was sufficient layer of reality between both, and a sufficiently thick wall of consciousness. Maybe this is not true, maybe the two overlap more frequently than I was aware of.

Strictly speaking, I was not in my fictional world - in the sense that I was not creating or developing my characters or plot. I was in a fictionalised real world: by that I mean, I was thinking of real people, people I had spoken to over phone just minutes ago. I was running the same conversation again, and then I moved on to conversations that might have happened. I imagined their reactions, my responses, the smiles, the laughter, the comedy. We might call it day dreaming or fantasising. I was too involved in it (I was also doing some chore at the time where not much brain interaction was required) that I did not realise someone was standing just a few feet away, and that I was enacting the scene, gestures, words, expressions and all, much to that person's amusement.

So many thoughts come to my mind when I think about this. One is that we are such an absent-minded lot hovering dangerously over the brink, and the journey to complete isolation begins somewhere close by. Too close by. It is scary. Some day, if this goes on, I could end up living more in my imagined world (with real and fictional characters) than in the real world with real people. Some might call it madness.

Another thought is that these imagined conversations will one day make their way into my story. It has happened before. I have imagined meetings with people I know (people who barely remember me and don't think of me at all), conversations, attitudes, expressions, everything. Then later one of my characters would find himself/herself in a similar situation and say the very same words and display the same behaviour and expressions. That's not a bad thing. At least that is what I tell myself when I remember this incident and my cheeks begin to turn red at the memory.

Love.

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Forgetfulness is inevitable in a Writer's Life

Dear M,

I forgot something yesterday. Something that was very, very important to the family, and very important to me. I forgot about it for five complete hours. Nothing happened, no one was harmed due to it but it brought home to me that drastic realisation that my real world and my contrived world are so far apart that it might take me five hours to move from one to another.

It is often said that writers are - as are artists of all nature - an absent-minded lot. When you hear it, standing somewhere at the brim or outside the realm of art, it sounds exciting, romantic, even enthralling. One would yearn to be an artist to be so absent-minded and creative. Except that, when you are in it, it is no fun at all.

I drowned in guilt for a long time. No one blamed me, in fact no one had probably even noticed my absence all the while. Yet, inside I remained shattered for long. How could I forget it? It had been the foremost thought in my mind before I went to sleep the previous night. I was concerned, I was worried, and I was praying. And yet when I awoke, my mind was wiped clean. All those long hours (when I was hard at work), this memory did not cross my mind even once.

It was terrifying. To be an artist so absent-minded as to forget family, friends and one's own priorities, is not as wonderful as it sounds. It is painful - to others as well as one's own self. It is every bit as tragic as a drunkard father who forgets his children. That is what we sign ourselves for when we call ourselves artists. It is not romantic, it is not exciting. And yet, if we are unable to detach ourselves from the daily intricacies of life, we would never be able to delve into our fictional world, our creative world. So this pain is essential, this feeling of guilt is important. Because, until we feel the guilt, we are not deep enough inside it.

If we want to finish all our responsibilities before we take up writing, we would never get there. We would never find time. And if writing is something you do when you get time, then it is not your life. It is merely a hobby, which you can abandon any time, or get back to any time. If writing is your life, then you know this pain, then you must endure this pain.

Who said writing was easy?

Love.

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Writers need guidance too

Dear M,

Sometimes I feel lost. And lonely. And it is not only because the writing I do is lonely business. It certainly is, but the real reason is that I sometimes need someone to tell me, why don't you try that? or Here, let me help you with that. Not just anyone, though. Someone who really can help. I don't want it easy, but this feeling of being in the dark, groping my way forward (or backward, I have no idea) and sometimes finding a wall and sometimes walking without encountering anything... when it isn't depressing, it is devastating.

I wish someone would tell me, I know someone in the publishing field, let me introduce you to them, they can give you some guidance, maybe they can even get your work read by someone. Once, a friend told me that if I finish my book he would introduce me to someone who can introduce me to an editor in a very popular publishing house. I worked on my book with renewed energy, just hanging on to those words. A year later when I was ready, something seemed to have changed - for nothing came of it, no introduction was made. I finished my book, that was the only positive thing that had happened.

For my part, I think I am too proud to ask someone for help. I don't know - I don't see anyone who can help, so who do I ask? Well I did ask someone once, and all he said was, Yes of course, you can send your query to this publishing house and see what they say. Do you want their address?


Everyone expects you to know everything there is to know about writing. They think you know what to do, they think it is only a matter of time before you surprise them with a book or an award or something, and they wait. Eagerly and encouragingly.

You don't want to disappoint anyone, so you keep a straight face and pretend that you do know everything indeed. Yes, the book will be coming out soon. Oh, I am hard at work. Writing all the time, of course. They nod in vigorous excitement and support. When? When? When will the book be out?
Oh I don't know... maybe in a year or two, this publishing is a damn difficult thing.

And all the time, something deep inside has collapsed to the ground, and you pray with all your might that these people (and you too) will be alive when your book finally attains the shape of a book.

Who is the publisher? Some of the more knowledgeable people ask.
I am negotiating with a few of the good ones, you say. Unless you find a real good publisher, the book will not sell well, you see.

You sound as though you're interviewing the publisher for a book contract. As though, the publishers are lined up at your door, waiting to kiss your feet and make an offer for the book.

I didn't know this art of writing also involved the art of deception. Among other things.

Love.

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