My Ritual Before I Start Writing

I always have to give myself a pep talk before I start writing. Every time. 

Every God damn time.

So, you’re wondering what’s the pep talk, right? Well, here it is.

It’s OK to write the way you are writing. After all, you are writing for yourself.

It seems to be the holy grail of pep talk aimed at writers, right?

Writers write for themselves.

But come on, let’s not lie. What fun would it be to craft stories if no one read them?

Today, I was reading Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian.

Side note, give it a read. You’ll thank me later.

The point of referencing the book is this, in the story, the narrator is a fourteen-year-old boy, and that’s why this book is brilliant. The writing style was true to its narrator, not the writer. I know, I know, it sounds confusing, but hear me out.

What’s the first advice any creative writing teachers gives? Show. Don’t tell. Right?

Now, tell me this, when you were fourteen, and you used to write, did you use to write elegant description of trees, roads, houses?

If you replied yes, then stop, don’t read any further. This post isn’t for you. Sorry.

But if you said no, well, I made my point.

A straight dive into the chaos. Once again.

Sherman actually wrote from the point of view of a fourteen-year-old. Man, that’s some crazy shit.

If you ever read the entire bibliography of an author, you’ll see there worrying style evolves with time.

It’s natural. Change is the only constant. Like death’s the only absolute truth.

The point being, we, as budding writers, are so fixated over some textbook definition of creative writing. We are so worried that we miss the whole point of writing. To live life twice. Once with our senses, and again with our words.

Do you really need me to spell it out for you?

Ah, idiot.

Write whatever comes natural to you. The rest is for the editors.

via Daily Prompt: Finally

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Who Is At The Centre Of Your Novel?

Let me ask you one simple questions.

All of you, yeah, you, the one who is reading it, eyes glued to the screen. You do wish to write a novel someday, right?

Answer me this then, what is at the centre of your novel?

No, it isn’t the plot.

It’s something rather trivial. Idiots that we like to call characters.

A troubled youngster. A beautiful girl. A lead mother you can empathize with. And whatnot.

When I wrote my first novel (No, it isn’t published. Yet.), I knew all the characters at the top of my hands. Well, I did because I was all the characters.

After all, I have said it thousand times by now, all first novels are autobiographical.

So, I knew exactly how the lead will behave to any conflict.

The second one which I want to write, I want to take a slight detour for that. I do not want to write about my life once again. Well, it will have my life after all, what else can I write, you write what you know.

So, the point is, there is something we call character questionnaire.

Have you people tried it?

It contains bunch of questions, you know, like where does your character eat? What’s their favorite book? Who they call in time of distress?

You get the gist, right?

I’m about to give it a go. First time I didn’t. Like I said, I knew all the characters perfectly.

This time I need to do some work.

Thoughts?

Via Daily Prompt: Communal

It’s All About Hard Work

There isn’t an easy or quirky way to say it. Wait, there is, but I am not in the mood.

In this digital age, the internet is filled with millions of guides containing the keywords, easy ways, and simple steps.

But you will have to understand this, they say that because they want your email address. Everything requires effort on your part. Some learn quickly, some learn slowly, but eventually, everyone succeeds.

But the necessity for that is hard work.

The Best Blogging Advice Ever

It’s has been more than five months since I started blogging. And damn, it has been an interesting journey so far. No, I am not calling quits, if that’s what it reads like so far.

Not yet.

I’d be lying if I say there weren’t days when I thought of quitting. There were days when I almost deleted the site.

But I didn’t. You want to know the reason why?

Three Disastrous Words You Should Avoid Like Plague

As many of my regular readers know, I’ve been recently working on my novel, “A Love Story?” It has been an exhaustive but satisfying process. For the last eight-ten days, I’ve been extensively editing my novel. As a result, I do believe I have some authority when I tell you to avoid the words that I am about to share.

These words, they do not add anything substantial to your writing, or what we technically call filler words. In no manner, I am saying that you should follow my words like Bible (Though that’d be cool).

Quote 301117

The more you explain it, the less I understand it – Mark Twain.

Personal Blogging 101 – Why You Should Start

The best things I’ve learned in my life, the most profound lessons that were ever taught to me, they were done in an informal language. I do not understand this relentless need to show-off.

Again, an abrupt start, isn’t it? Lately, it seems that I am doing that a lot. Either way, let me explain the thought process behind that particular line. I was in the middle of a lecture and somewhere in-between I lost interest and started writing. As the lecture was rather technical in nature, it was filled with jargon that could easily be explained in simple English.

So, I ended up doing what I do whenever I get distracted by mundane things. I started writing, describing the scene for myself, as part of writing practice that I make myself go through every day.

How To Stay Motivated Enough To Write – Personal Blogging 102

There is a quote by Stephan Hawking that I love, it goes like this, “Every generation stands on the shoulder of those who have gone before them.”

If there is one thing I’m unbelievably passionate about, it’s writing, and maybe music. All right, there are two things I’m unbelievably passionate about.

Sure, every now and then, I end up writing about writing, but isn’t it fair? If something changed your life, or at least improved it significantly, you are bound to talk about it, over and over again.

Another little detail I’ve shared on many occasion is this, “I struggled with writing for 18 months before I started writing everyday. As much as I’ve written in last four months, I haven’t written that much in my life before that.”

Now you might ask what changed.

Sure, I committed, surely, I tried working with passion but those two qualities, I had worked with them before too. They didn’t seem to work then.

OK, enough suspense.

I started blogging, reading blogs and writing blog posts. The first part is relevant because the manner in which a blog is written is entirely different than the manner in which, say, an academic paper, or fiction is written. They are two different art forms, even though both of them share the common medium of written words.

If you ever get the displeasure of knowing me in person, you’ll realize I’m your stereotypical obnoxious idiots who is obsessed with perfection.

Writing is art, every one has different taste. There is no such thing as perfection when it comes to the art of written words. Something that is appreciated by one person might feel like total crap to someone else. It is to be expected.

Simplest advice, embrace imperfections, we are humans and we are full of our faults.

It’s all right. We all face those issues.

We tend to believe we are in control, but in reality, all we have is nothing but an illusion of control. There is no such thing as fiction, every dialogue, every scene, every plot, it’s inspired by something that actually happened to author or something that he or she witnessed.

The simplest and most basal motivator why we started blogging was rather cliched. We wanted our voice to be hard. If you believe otherwise, you’re just lying to yourself.

Almost everything that we write is written for ourselves, to process ideas, to brainstorm, to introspect or to capture a moment, all of that is done through words.

Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for public and have no sense of self – Cyril Connolly.

To summarise, I’m just rambling to clarify one simple thing. Write for yourself. I’ve said it hundred times. I’m not joking, I’ve literally written hundred posts saying the same things.

Do not worry about anything else. Write. The only way you find your writer’s voice is by writing, not by some computational analysis.

This article originally appeared on my little collaborative effort, The Perfectly Imperfect Bunch, a group of imperfect writers giving writing advice.

Looking for Personal Blogging 101? You can find it here. All the images were created using Canva, you can find other images that I worked on with Canva here.

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Diary Of A Madman – Entry 25th October 2017 (Because I’m Running Out of Original Titles)

Come on. Here we go again, motherfucker. Oh, sorry, compulsory warning, this post contains profanity. Well, because I’m in one of my moods. You call them profanity, I call them sentence enhancers. And before I forget, that’s how Slipknot’s best album starts. 

Should I do it? It’s feels as if I ignored it for too long. Though in reality it was only three days. Shit. Three days, that’s way too long for someone like me. Too long to ignore the voices, to ignore the need.

This isn’t the way it is supposed to be. This is the only way I feel whole. That sounds so pathetic. Can I really maintain the suspense for a little long? I’m struggling so much. Now I know why I’m a horrible suspense writer. I can only write soapy drama. Maybe I’m one dimensional. No matter how much I try to ignore it. For example, this is a little exercise to write something in short sentences. Simple sentences. No complex sentences. No compound verbs.

Improper paragraph breaks. Five lines. Seven lines. The point is mixing up your style. Maybe it is a way to challenge yourself. Maybe this is how we are supposed to get out of our comfort zone. As of late, I’ve been feeling that my writing skills are rather limited. It feels as if I’m repeating myself over and over again. That can be a good thing. After all, that’s how we achieve mastery over any skill.

Writing isn’t that. Not anymore. It’s something entirely else. Maybe I should try writing something in some other genre. Science fiction seems fitting. After all I am a nerd who studies Immunology.

I digressed, didn’t I? Maybe that is the way we write good suspense thriller. We add a lot of irrelevant details. That was a snark. Huh, I’m back to my old self. Come on, idiot, get out of your comfort zone. Anyone can write a rant. Write something ridiculous for a change.

But I’ve been writing that for so long. Then write something good. Simple.

That was a ridiculous little paragraph. Let’s see if I can make fun of some other stereotypical genre. Ooh, let’s try young adult fiction. Girl falls in love with a bad boy. Good boy helps the bad boy with homework (Homework is too cliched, maybe a bodybuilding championship, after all, nerds can go to gym too). Good boy falls in love with the girl. Bad boy chooses his gym membership over the girl (Wow! We have comedy too. Shit! Let’s overuse exclamation marks, that is another necessity of YA fiction). Girl goes to the good boy. Good boy accepts her. After all, good guys are pathetic loser who always soothe the ego of rejected idiots. Nice!! And we have the plot of next bestselling young adult fiction.

Maybe I should not publish this post and write the YA fiction myself. Brilliant! I got my NaNoWriMo plot figured out. I’ll be filthy rich (Imagine me doing the manic villian laughter).

I guess I am too stupid. I ended up writing another rant. Nitesh, you can never be a good writer, you idiot.

And while we are on that subject, what kind of fucking idiot talks about himself in third person? Well hello, a narcissist. Who else? Shit. Who cares for socially aware pragmatic citizens? We need dogmatic minions who worship stones and animals. This was fun.

Oh, about the suspense, I was on Slipknot break. Can you believe it? Three days without Slipknot. I’m surprised I’m not in jail. Perfect line. Slipknot – Because bitchslapping or punching people in the throat would be animal abuse.

Fuck! By now I’m entirely sure my death will most likely be caused by being sarcastic at the wrong time.

I wholeheartedly apologize for the overdone exclamation marks. I hate exclamation marks.

Via Daily Prompt: Identity

The Art of How Not To Write

Yesterday, I had published an article over at The Perfectly Imperfect Bunch, (Yeah, it’ still going on, maybe not so strong, but still) and as much as I would have liked for it to be read, apparently it only got thirty views.

Now, generally I move on but then I felt something special while I was writing it and I don’t know but I’d still like to give it one more chance, so if you read yesterday’s post here at TPIB, you can skip this post and if you didn’t, how dare you. Jokes aside, here it is, The Art of How Not To Write.

“Why do I do this, over and over again?

Why do I create chaos among my peace?”

I’m not ugly in your conventional sense. I do not wish to cut someone’s throat.

I’m ugly in the sense that I believe in treating your fellow beings as equal. I do not believe that women can’t be president or that they cannot run a fortune 500 company, whatever the hell that is.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter what you think of me, I mean, probably, it’ll matter to you, or you’ll think it matters to you, but in reality, whatever you think of me, is just a little sketch of the whole picture. Or the thought.