How To Become A Writer — 1/N

You make boats out of words
and drop them in the sea of stories.
The boats sink, one after the other,
water sneaks in through the spaces —
a rivulet through O, tiny streams snaking
through your countless a’s & b’s —
until the seabed has turned into
a deathbed of your unworthy words,
a cemetery of your early attempts,
teeming with wrecked boats of clichés,
your words lost in water like silt
from a river, making the sea saline enough
for your words to never sink, but swim,
even backfloat, with no need of a boat.

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How To Become A Writer — 8/N

You have been an eavesdropper since childhood.
You have overheard your father talk about his day
to mother from your study room; the hushed
grapevine of the back benches while you sat
on the front seat — busy being the teacher’s
favourite: who is dating whom, who’s broken up,
who’s cheating and with whom at college. You
have mastered the art of filtering the treasure
from a heap of trash, a word or a phrase
that’s worth stealing, a story plot lurking behind
the casual banter, the novel that exists with
two characters you know — what if they say
what you want them to, instead of their usual
babble. You eavesdrop as if a professional, as if
your career depends on it. Well, it does.

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How To Become A Writer — 23/N

Always keep writing a novel in your head. Live your life
like a novel, with you as the novelist having the free will
to decide which character you want in the story and which
you do not. Once you choose the characters, remember
you can't unchoose anytime soon, else they shouldn't have
arrived. Swap settings, change cities, if the story demands.
Fall in love when you feel you are, say yes without linger,
do everything that makes you feel it was a day to remember,
let the story takes its own sweet course and meander,
welcome anything that tests your courage & character.

Always remember, no story is worthy without a conflict.
When it arrives, live it with truth, compassion and grit.
Conflict is by far the most important part of your story.
Keeping the story alive, it often is the heart of the story.

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How To Become A Writer — 19/N

A true writer never asks others to read their works.
It’s too much of a blow to their mighty writerly ego.
They instead prefer to wait and watch their words
die a silent death, after not being discovered,
after not finding readers. Some blame it on the publisher,
some on the readers, calling them non-lit & what not,
and some take it too personally on themselves.
They think they aren’t good enough & they should
give up. The market nods in affirmation, so do
publishers & platforms. They eventually give up.
Writing isn’t for the faint hearted, for the touch-me-nots
and the-whole-world-sucks. It’s for the few who persist
and find enough courage to publish one bad book
after another, one bad quote after another, nonstop.
These few, lost in tireless unravelling of themselves,
find out that one day, the quote ain’t bad anymore
and an audience awaits to lap it up. A smile of
becoming lines their face then, of becoming a writer.

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HOW TO BECOME A WRITER — 26/N

Unlike a cook, a tailor or a shopkeeper,
a writer doesn't write for a customer.
No, not even for a reader. Because unlike food,
a trouser or a thing for sale, writing is timeless.
It is not just written in ink, but etched in history
outlasting even the writer who once wrote it.
If the writer starts to care about anyone else
but the truth ingrained in the writing,
the writing & its truth will be compromised.

13 years with writing brought me many readers,
some ardent, some critical. With time,
they all moved on like lovers who pass by.
Only one reader stuck by over the years, the one
who knows the truth and doesn't compromise.
I write for him & only him. In return,
he loves me like no other reader has or will—
like a writer.

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How To Become A Writer — 15/N

Funnily, of all the arts, writing demands the least.
No, you don’t need to be rich, you don’t need to
be privileged, you don’t need a picturesque life.
You don’t need equipments worth lacs like a
photographer, you don’t need to buy colours,
canvas, turpentine every now & then like an artist.
You don’t need space and mirrors that a ballet
dancer might. You don’t need instruments, mics
and soundproofing like a musician. You just need
a tiny space and a bit of silence and a pen and
paper. A pencil is good too. A laptop is a luxury.
You need time and you need a life fucked up
enough to be worthy of writing, worthy of ink.

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How To Become A Writer — 20/N

Don’t regard those as writers who differentiate two people
based on colour, class, race, religion or nationality,
for a writer’s core is defined by empathy, and no true
writer can withstand discrimination based on anything,
no matter how the world sees it. A writer’s job
is to put themselves in the shoes of others & no bigot
can stand true to the discipline & ethics of writing,
of letting go of all the biases & baggage we inherit.
A writer, or for that matter an artist, speaks one language
and that is of stories — and stories have various facets,
and sides, and those sides are visible only to someone
with utmost empathy & no ego. A writer is born to stand
against everything divisive and use words to glue each
other, words that have no colour, caste, class, words
that belong to the writer, and belong to the world.

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How To Become A Writer —18/N

You walk over the shards of your broken heart
over and over again, until it’s all powdered,
until it’s ready to be mixed with tears and
kneaded into a dough that could one day feed
a billion broken hearts.

You become a writer when healing takes time
and your words fill the void that not only
exists within you, but so many others.

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HOW TO BECOME A WRITER 28/N

Good writing is like fresh water.
Even though it's tasteless,
it fills you up like nothing else.
It nourishes you from within,
keeps your mind agile, you alive.

Learning to write well is
like learning to swim
in a fresh water lake.
It begins with
losing your fear.
It ends with
trusting the water.

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