Tag: writer

#9 Postcard – On Writing

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 😀

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.

Advertisement

#3 Postcard – Domestic happiness

Of fresh laundry, domestic chores and the increasing returns of cooking. I couldn’t have thought this thought last year.

I cooked ramen noodles today, using my own condiments instead of the packet mix. I got way too full from eating and drifted into sleep while watching KVizzing with the Comedians, on the same couch that I was finishing up my book yesterday.

Cooking is probably the only chore out of all the drudgery that one must go through – including laundry, doing dishes, sweeping/mopping, cleaning up after cooking – where I get increasing returns over time.

I mean, I do get a sense of domestic happiness when I carry a still-warm load of clean laundry from the dryer back to my closet. Each time I walk in to pick up a clean t-shirt or a pillow cover, I can’t wait for the dirty pile to fill up so I can return their sweet Tide scent to them. But the process stays the same. Nothing changes.

But with cooking it’s an improving curve, still, for me.
I have tried pad thai from 6 places here so far. While they didn’t taste all that different, at least half of them had no crunch left in the vegetables and were overwhelmingly doused in soy – which raises the thought I could’ve cooked it better. And I couldn’t have thought this thought last year.
I don’t feel too strongly about pad thai though.

After waking up from my nap, I had another half-plate of my ramen – it smells distinctly of fish sauce which I don’t mind and there is the crunch from cabbage.

There is also some joy in just looking at my kitchen shelf and wondering – what if I get cooped up in here for two weeks? It is a convenient thought because my groceries would never last more than two weeks, and my imaginary emergencies cap at two weeks 🙂

I just had my third cup of kattan for the day, noticed I’m running low on brown sugar and am low-key excited because of the high I get from restocking. There must be a name for this?

#2 Postcard – Low hanging fruit & Kafka on the Shore

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 about today“. 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.

End of Writing Workshop

Today was the fourth and final session of Art of Clear Writing workshop.

Today was the fourth and final session of Art of Clear Writing workshop. I missed last Saturday’s class because I was suffering chills and fatigue from my second Covid-19 vaccine shot (Pfizer). So I lay on my bed after logging into the Zoom session, Amit Varma moved forward with the workshop as I drifted into exhausted sleep. By the time I woke up, Zoom had logged me out.

We had a bunch of writing exercises over the past couple of weeks, I will publish some of my workshop pieces in the coming days. But the key takeaway from the workshop was that you figure out a writing process that works for you, and most importantly to keep writing.

Building a tribe/community was another one – to discover other writers who are in the same stage of our own writing journey. I realized I have WordPress and I hope it’s going to be an easier task here.

PS – I counted the adverbs I used in this post and it’s only one out of 148 words. Nothing impressive, but to be mindful is the first step!

The Art of Clear Writing – Of dance and writing

I signed up for The Art of Clear Writing workshop by Amit Varma, and the first session was today at 10 PM IST.

(Listen on Spotify)

I signed up for The Art of Clear Writing workshop by Amit Varma, and the first session was today at 10 PM IST. Like so many other things in my life, my brother had recommended it to me a few weeks ago (well, more like he asked me to do it :D), and my first thought went – High time I attended one of these.

I have never stuck to a deadline with my writing because deadlines to me have been a part of the routine side of life. The day regime where you go to work or sign into your laptop at 8. Attend standup calls, plan sprint schedules and keep track of your projects on JIRA boards and OneNote notebooks.

The rest of my life is disorganized – writing and dancing occupy huge shares in it, and I indulge in them whenever I feel like it. To me, that’s also what was fun about it and I staunchly believed that adding timetables and discipline to it would take the fun away.

Yet I have to acknowledge the best part about the times that I do stick to learning a dance choreography lies in the impressive (and much-lacking) discipline it brings to my life. I work out regularly in the two to four weeks that it takes to finishing a piece. I fall asleep by midnight as I’m exhausted by the physical activity, so I end up getting a full 8 hours sleep. I take multiple showers and eat really well because I build a normal-to-huge appetite. I drink tons of water.

Which is why I initially decided that I’d see about the writing workshop later, and that I’d join Bharatanatyam classes first (I have wanted to attend them for years, but it’s a lukewarm urge 55% of the time).

Last week though, I got thinking about my writing. Like I mentioned, I am not one to push content or impose deadlines with this blog. This space in fact has always been less of a blog and more of a dwelling for my thoughts. Yet once I started reading more again in the last month, I have wanted to write more, and to take it up seriously.

This is a stepping stone.

PS : Too little about writing in this first post on the topic; the upcoming ones will be more on writing and less about everything else 🙂

%d bloggers like this: