Stephen King says, If God gives you something you can do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it? Wouldn’t you do it until your fingers bleed or until your eyes fall out of your head?
In On Writing, Stephen King talks about how he arranged saxophone lessons for his son when the seven-year old fell in love with the instrument. He soon knew that it was time to stop, and that the sax was not for him. He knew not because his son stopped practicing, but because his son practiced only during the classes set for him.
He says it’s better to move on to an area where deposits of talent may be richer and the fun quotient higher.
This follows an observation about gifted writers, good writers and bad; more importantly he acknowledges the existence of bad writers. It is satisfying to read things you have thought yourself. One can only wonder, however, which category one belongs to đ
At this point, I was glad that managers of the world have not read the book, or they would know how to quickly verify it when candidates tell them My profession is my biggest passion. Okay, let’s not bring day jobs here. Moving on.
He says, If God gives you something you can do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it? Wouldn’t you do it until your fingers bleed or until your eyes fall out of your head? Why did Harper Lee who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird stop at one book? Her own answer is – “I have said what I wanted to say, and I will not say it again”. Arundhati Roy says “Fiction takes time”.
I haven’t read enough to write about writers’ rules. But I guess people do what works for them, in general. Some find rules that worked for others, some set their own. The most interesting always being gems created by breaking the rules. But like other fields, it’s important for mere mortals (which is most of us) to know rules of the game before we break them.
To put down in words what lies behind the simplest of exchanges – in this case, a pause – must be some gift indeed.
If you told me today morning as I woke up, that I’d go on a reading spree and finish Kafka On The Shore by sundown, you’d have surprised me. I have not covered 350 pages in a day in years, I think. It’s not a feat by any standards, not even for the 14 year old version of me. And these pages were generously spaced and had wide margins.
Did I do this so I could write about the book in today’s write-up? I don’t think so, the story is brilliant and the book a page-turner.
I did do something else, I have to admit, because of the question, “What do I write abouttoday“. I cooked three dishes – I used beans and diced tomatoes from cans, store-bought curd in a tub and a ready-to-boil fish curry masala so the whole thing took less than an hour. It was hard to not think I could write about this at various points.
200 words a day is low-hanging fruit, intended for those who find it difficult to get writing done. So once they hit the target they look forward to writing more until they slowly stop paying attention to the count. The other side to it is to prioritize Quantity over Quality – to do it before you do it well. I guess I’ll start somewhere in between.
Although I could write 200 words about the garlic I chopped for Rajma masala today (I didn’t count my words, but I had the narration going in my head as I peeled the cloves and made thin slices out of them). There was a tidbit I wanted to throw in about Nigella Lawson explaining why she loves canned tomatoes and how they’re a lifesaver though many look down on them; much like 15 year olds playing pretend-cooking-show hosts while they’re in the kitchen.
Of course I listened to her 10 years before I’d actually use canned tomatoes, and it’s one of the few things I’ll be sure to miss when I leave this country.
I’ll leave you with the below 2 lines from the book :
“Kafka, I-” She stops, looking for the right words. I wait for her to find them.
To put down in words what lies behind the simplest of exchanges – in this case, a pause – must be some gift indeed.
I took out âreadingâ from my list of hobbies a couple of years ago. I remember going to public library to borrow algorithms texts last year. The year before that, I browsed the shelves for books on development studies and sociology. This year, Iâve visited only on behalf of my mother to get her yoga books from the ground floor main section.
It is quite probable that I was never an avid reader. I mostly read what Achu annan suggested/bought me. An omnibus for every birthday when I was young. A lot of Paulo Coelho from our school library. Those standard books almost everyone reads â Kite Runner, To kill a mockingbird, JD Salinger.
He bought me Catâs Eye in my final year and it was great. For some reason, I really liked reading books written by women. There was this book by a lady â I forget the name but Iâm sure I have it written down in one of my diaries â it talked of suitors and hemming lines, dainty glass cups taken out in the afternoons with designs on them, extra linen stored away in cupboards and wardrobes, recipe books with extra scribblings in pencil on margins, and double curtains – not necessarily all plush (mostly not and those being the best kind. Too cosy. Is it too English, early 20th centuryish? There were Indian books among them as well. Unlike Wodehouse with golf and butlers, that was my brother’s thing.
Sapiens is lying around and he has asked me to read it, more than a couple times. I tried and the contents page gave me the idea of a summary of Anthropology texts â evolution. Achu annan still vouches for it, but Iâm not sure Iâd visit again. I had a similar experience with 100 years of solitude. Made a mental note of returning later to see if maybe I liked it now, but havenât yet.
So â I started reading again. My reading has, over last 2 years, been reduced to blogs on WordPress (mostly recipes of thoroughly familiar and straightforward stuff like dal â yes itâs a fetish), Medium articles and more stuff off the internet. On Sundays I look for Vasundhara Chauhanâs cookery and recipes or culinary experiences in Hindu â mutton cooked in pressure cookers with meat falling off the bone and tender chicken pieces in stew. All of G. Sampathâs satirical stories, especially the ones where his complainant wife is cooking a curry, and finishes before the raunchy couple heâs watching on tv does.
As always, I digress.
Iâm reading Winesburg, Ohio. Itâs a small town where everyone knows each other. I picked it from a list of rustic set books. Honestly, I do not stick to settings though, and I picture a prairie-land â yellow meadow of grasses with sun shining over, intermittent cottage houses with ivy walls and narrow roads connecting them. The landscape in âLove comes slowlyâ precisely describes it. Once in a while Sherlock Holmes visits to solve a case, unimpressed, and the lady from A Sound of Music is running amidst the dry grasses, singing in the evenings in her skirt-gowns. All the women are strong and wear layers of clothing. The men are strong as well, like in those movies set in Ireland and they eat freshly baked bread and chicken pies from firewood ovens with gravy.
Thereâs a beach adjacent to it, the shore from a story about an old man once written by a friend. Somehow it fit there right next to the prairie.
The meadow segues into the short grassy ground in front of our engineering college quarters, where boys played in the evenings after school and fresh cow milk was delivered by a woman who lived in the depths of the road that went behind our house, to far away from where the sun shines.
We were taught âDaffodilsâ in middle school (I think we all were, irrespective of the schools we went to). I had no idea what a daffodil looked like, the teacher did describe them but our brains have their own way of concocting images, no? I was stuck in a vast daffodil field for a long time. The field over time metamorphosed into the meadow, the prairie and everything else. I googled to find a match to the image in my head, sometimes it occurred in dreams, sometimes in stories and movies, it just wasnât daffodils anymore. I don’t think it ever was.
I think somewhere in my childhood reading or English poetry classes, I got lost in one of those villages. And I refuse to come out.
Or maybe I just love revisiting.
Do you know what the worst part about writing is? It sometimes takes the magic out of things. I swear.
I remember writing about Indian coffee house once. It took me a long time to feel again what I wrote about after posting it, cos when I returned all I could think of were people’s comments. Itâs like exposing a part of you. More importantly, itâs just not in my head anymore, Iâve put it down in words thereby limiting it â defining it. You know?
Itâs like some things shouldnât be put on paper until youâre ready to let go of them.
So Winesburg, Ohio â itâs mostly menâs stories â men from Winesburg, a small village town with vast open fields. There are women obviously else I couldnât bear it. This author Sherwood Anderson wrote it, there are dainty cups from time to time, soft hands and wistful smiles and a lot of cynicism. But most importantly, there are evenings with the sun shining over the village and its cottages.
I donât think I do a good job at a charismatic or even an accurate description. But I think I might be writing less and reading more now.
Itâs time to get lost again.
I’ll leave you with this image assuming you too like cosy beds
Hard-boiled eggs, ham sandwiches, bacon, jars of potted meat, scones and homemade jam, crusty loaves of freshly baked bread, slabs of butter, fresh farm cheese, red radishes and lettuce, apple pies, short bread biscuits and homemade lemonade. Ring a bell? There’s more  –
Tongue sandwiches (that’s the giveaway), cold ham, bacon and egg sandwiches, pork pies, tinned sardines, bars of chocolate, potatoes gleaming with melted butter, jars of fresh clotted cream, fruit cake, jugs of milk, cherry tarts, and ginger beer.
(I got real hungry when I put this list together).
Food Writing must be the best thing in the world – in what other genre would you not be irked by the author’s overuse of ‘fresh’? Fresh farm cheese and fresh clotted cream are a blessing!
I first read Enid Blyton without a clue of what scones/bacon/tarts/pies were and could only hope tongue sandwiches didn’t serve real tongue. When Famous Five and Secret Seven went on their picnic/teaparties, I would re-read the list of foods they got packed, savoring every single one, slowly. As if drooling the first time wasn’t enough.
The Faraway Tree with its Land of Goodies and Birthdays was every kid’s dream treat, though after sometime I restlessly turned pages to find the Land of Stationery (there was none). I mean what about tiny, aesthetic perfect-edged Faber Castell erasers? What kid isn’t obsessed with sketchpens and color pencils? Only flavored jellies and macaroons, honey-filled pop cakes, popsicles and icecream, pound cakes dipped in white candy and Blyton’s regulars of boiled eggs, ham, bacon and cucumber sandwiches could make up for it.
But the start-of-term Great Feast fare in Hogwarts was never as tempting as a plainly-written Enid Blyton afternoon-tea menu. Roast chicken, boiled and mashed potatoes are all I recall (and the movie scene where Ron chows down chicken legs). Of course there were grand coursemeals with bacon, beef, lamb and steak, Yorkshire pudding and gravy, but I was happiest during The Burrow visits, where Molly Weasley perpetually tipped sausages and fried eggs onto plates and sent extra helpings of chicken pie flying around.
Would I want to indulge in the elaborate spreads described in books? Not really, rousing (or is it torturing) my senses is indulgence enough. And only Enid Blyton can make cucumber sandwiches seem so appetizing.
Though I’d like to taste the gruel/porridge from Oliver Twist – because the way Sister Pramila mouthed “thin watery soup“ in Class 6 English made it sound like she regularly prepared it at the convent and it was in fact delicious.
And French onion soup! There was so much of it in the Harry Potter series, it pushed me to google the recipe (I mean I’m not that kind of person). I had pictured it a faded pinkish-brown, with soggy yet not mushy half-rings of onion submerged in a thick creamy broth. Savory than sweet.
Maybe I’ll try cooking it someday.
I like soup.
PS : I think this is the most fun I’ve had making a blogpost. My salivary glands are exhausted.
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