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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A word of advice to all aspiring authors: if a publisher is asking you for money to publish your work, show your middle finger to them.

Don't go for them. You need to be paid an advance by the publisher, not the other way round. There are many such shitty publishing houses that have cropped up that fleece money off a lot of gullible authors. Avoid them. You don't lose anything by not getting published by them. No need to hurry yourself into publishing. Give it a few years, get better, bigger and better publishers will take notice.

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"You know what."
"What?"
"The quote that you posted is quite clichéd."
"No, I just wrote it."

"You might have read it before. Your subconscious mind remembers even if you have forgotten."

"No, I didn't read it before. It's 100% original."

"If you didn't read it before, it doesn't necessarily mean it's original. It might also mean you haven't read enough."

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I’m sorry but I have a pet peeve. I can’t tolerate writings with the word petrichor in it. It sounds so pretentious. None of us have grown up reading or hearing it. Every time it is used anywhere, it seems forced. It seems a wordy replacement for a beautiful emotion. The word, which oddly sounds like a Hindi expletive, doesn’t evoke any wistfulness that’s associated with the smell of earth before rain. It just doesn’t speak to me.

What really puts me off is the fact that there has been a Hindi word all the while to convey the same. सौंधी सी ख़ुशबू। We are eager to borrow a random word from a foreign tongue but not one that’s more natural to us, something that has been innate to us. This feels like intellectual dishonesty for the writer in me. And hence I never trust writers who use this word.

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My Favourite Writing Teacher

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Learning From Writers

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I use a thesaurus when I want to find simpler words to convey my thoughts. Many writers use it for the exact opposite reason. I also thought the same earlier that you need the thesaurus to expand your vocabulary, find the words that you don't even know and use them in your text, but then I read about Hemingway's writing habits and it changed my perception entirely. He used to rewrite his drafts five to six times, where he shortened the sentences, replaced the needless big words with the small ones, making them simpler, but he was careful enough not to affect the profundity of his work.

I could not agree more, because the words which doesn't come in your head naturally while writing aren't the words which would make the writing seem natural and effortless.

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Writing gyaan:
Difference Between Artist & Artiste

“There is a small difference between the artist and artiste, and that too is just in the usage. An artist is the one who is indulged in the work of art or creates a piece of art. On the other hand, artiste refers to an artist who is specifically a skilled public performer such as a dancer, singer or an actor.”

E.g. Sudeep is a spoken word artiste. M.F. Hussain is an artist.

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Here goes some useful gyaan for aspiring novelists.

Don't work on a novel until you have written enough number of short stories. Writing a novel is an arduous process. Most of the first time novelists without prior story writing experience will churn out boring books.

Any story has 3 parts: beginning, middle and end. Beginning and end are the easiest to write - because you are highly motivated both while beginning or ending a novel. The biggest beast while writing a novel is the middle. Which takes the longest time. Which makes you give up a thousand times. Which, if not written well — with a uniform voice, with a uniform mood, with a careful choice of words — ends up making your work terribly boring. You need stamina of imagination to sustain.

Treat writing a novel like running a marathon. You can't attempt a good 42k run without practicing with 5k run 10k run and 21k run before. Replace run with words.

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Dear Writers,

Today, there’s going to be
no new mail in your inbox
because Baba is busy
with his grandma.
He’s meeting her
after a long time,
& decided to spend time
listening to her stories
than telling his own.

Baba is sorry,
and has 3 tips for you.

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