Ever since I travelled back to my hometown, I have not been able to keep up with my routine. I’m not sure of the reasons, but things have been tricky.
One reason I believe is my mindset. For years now, I have been travelling to this place, to my other home, only on vacations. I would take long leaves, be off work and spend some relaxed time in the city where I’ve spent the majority of my early years. I feel I’ve grown accustomed to the air here and now I associate it with relaxation. Hence it has been extremely difficult to do anything else.
I’ve been sleeping a lot more. I’ve been eating a lot more. I’ve been slacking a lot more. I can do my office work, that doesn’t seem to be affected. But every other routine task is. I was waiting for things to naturally get back to normal. 2 weeks in and I don’t think there’s any chance of that happening.
So I am forcing myself now to get back into the routine. Time to bring the diaries, the journals back. Get the diet, the focus apps out. Reset those snoozed alarms again. Close eyes for those mindful 2 minutes. Stare regularly at the blinking cursor.
I recently took a big decision to travel across the state and temporarily settle down into my hometown. Closer to my family and friends. I'm anyway working from home. So it doesn't matter how far away from the office I actually am. It wasn't an easy decision, but a strong desire to break the monotonous routine made it a lot clear. So over the weekend, I and my close family travelled and have begun to settle into a new place.
Consequently, I could hardly find time for everything that was routine for me. One of them is the weekly issue of my newsletter. With just a couple of days in hand, the self-doubt had started clouding my mind, making me question whether I'm on the right track. Should I continue to spend time on publishing the weekly issues? Would I have enough time to curate each issue to make it interesting? Am I failing at another side project? A timely comment from a reader cleared the doubts. And it also gave me the topic for the next issue; I cleaned the slate and started curating it afresh.
In this week's issue of Slanting Nib & A Keyboard, I feature the essays that, in no way, preach how the fear of failure can be, should be overcome. Rather they attempt to persuade that it is all fine to fail. I needed the nudge myself. Each of these essays lent that to me.
Do give it a read online. If what you read interests you, please subscribe. If you are already subscribed and have been enjoying the issues, I will appreciate if you forward them to your friends.
PS: The issue also has a glaring mistake -- so fitting to let the first one (that I know of) slip through in an issue about failing.
Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success. — C. S. Lewis
We are surrounded by opportunities to fail at. We judge ourselves when we can’t meet societal expectations. Furthermore, we blame ourselves when we don’t fulfil our high aspirations. For creatives, the “fear of failure” is numbing - every such mind is then inundated with suggestions to overcome this fear. Ironically, the suggestions come from the same society whose unreasonable expectations label these minds as “failures”.
In this issue, I feature the essays that, in no way, preach how such fears can be, should be overcome. Rather, they attempt to persuade that it is all fine to fail.
“Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Julian Barnes, Anne Enright, Howard Jacobson, Will Self and Lionel Shriver reflect on their disappointments in life, love and work”. It is a brilliant read for when the trying times drag you, your morale down. Everyone fails. Especially those who are known for their successes. I find the below passage from Anne Enright enlightening.
I have no problem with failure - it is success that makes me sad. Failure is easy. I do it every day, I have been doing it for years. I have thrown out more sentences than I ever kept, I have dumped months of work, I have wasted whole years writing the wrong things for the wrong people. Even when I am pointed the right way and productive and finally published, I am not satisfied by the results. This is not an affectation, failure is what writers do. It is built in.
“What makes a good writer? Is writing an expression of self, or, as TS Eliot argued, ‘an escape from personality’? Do novelists have a duty? Do readers? Why are there so few truly great novels? Zadie Smith writes about literature’s legacy of honourable failure.”
Map of disappointments - Nabokov would call that a good title for a bad novel. It strikes me as a suitable guide to the land where writers live, a country I imagine as mostly beach, with hopeful writers standing on the shoreline while their perfect novels pile up, over on the opposite coast, out of reach. Thrusting out of the shoreline are hundreds of piers, or “disappointed bridges”, as Joyce called them. Most writers, most of the time, get wet. Why they get wet is of little interest to critics or readers, who can only judge the soggy novel in front of them. But for the people who write novels, what it takes to walk the pier and get to the other side is, to say the least, a matter of some importance.
For a writer, every rejection, every failure is an opportunity to stop writing? Why should I write when no one wants to read what I write? And what should I write about if anything that I write about doesn’t interest anyone? The doubts are genuine, but to stop after such doubts cloud your mind is to be brutal on the creative mind. Annie Dillard lays out many ways that writers can trudge along through the difficult phases of self-scrutiny.
One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
Author of a published novel, Andrea often writes short essays and stories. Carve Magazine had published one of her short stories, Kudzu as part of their Fall 2015 issue. Andrea magnificently narrates this layered story of an ageing lady and her two relationships – one that’s blooming and another that’s lost. The Kudzu fields surrounding the town plays a role that’s a lot more significant than being just a backdrop.
When the regular music distracts you while you write, the ambient noise of just a café does not work, Noisli can help. A “digital place for focus” as the team behind describes the service, it allows you to mix and match various sounds to get that perfect environment. You can select the ambient sounds of rain, thunder, fire, forest and many others. It also provides a curated playlist of such sound mixes.
One Final Inspiration
When an idea strikes follow that pure inspiration. That pure untapped creative energy all the way to fruition. That’s what we do as writers. We channel a stroke of pure brilliance / insanity and turn it into something tangible.
Have any recommendations or feedback for me? I’d love to hear from you. Just hit reply, or you can even email me.
Thank you for reading and sharing.
-Amit
Another issue of Slanting Nib & A Keyboard newsletter is out today. It features a few essays from the masters who have, over the years, learned to command the art by confronting each of the factors that drive every writer or a creative mind to satisfaction - inspiration, focus and craft.
I had to delay this issue by an hour as I could not complete my final review in time. It was a race against meeting the deadline and the last-minute call from work made it all the more difficult. I usually find the links that I want to feature way ahead of time. However, I carefully include the comments later to be sure about why I'm including the link as part of the issue. I had to rush through the commentary part today. So, if you find the description slightly incoherent, my planning-gone-wrong is to blame - a learning experience to not trudge too close to the deadline.
Do give it a read online. If what you read interests you, please subscribe. If you are already subscribed and have been enjoying the issues, I will appreciate if you forward them to your friends.
Writing is a difficult trade which must be learned slowly by reading great authors; by trying at the outset to imitate them; by daring then to be original and by destroying one’s first productions. – André Maurois
A writer is driven to satisfaction by three key factors. The first is an inspiration to think of a way to put his or her thoughts, the ideas, into words. Another factor is the focus to sit down staring at the blinking cursor without getting lured by the myriads of easily accessible distractions. And the final one is the craft that the writer brings to the table, one that he or she horns and perfects over the year.
This issue features a few essays from the masters who have, over the years, learned to command the art by confronting each of these factors. Let’s get straight to the recommendations.
Neil Gaiman answers the question that each published author gets asked a lot – “where do you get the idea from”. And apparently “out of my head” is not an acceptable answer for most.
The ideas aren’t the hard bit. They’re a small component of the whole. Creating believable people who do more or less what you tell them to is much harder. And hardest by far is the process of simply sitting down and putting one word after another to construct whatever it is you’re trying to build: making it interesting, making it new.
But still, it’s the question people want to know. In my case, they also want to know if I get them from my dreams. And I don’t give straight answers. Until recently.
Everybody is a procrastinator, or most have been some time in their life. Megan Mcardle argues writers are a special kind; for them, being a procrastinator is “a peculiarly common occupational hazard”. Megan goes on to lay out why she is convinced that the writers are the worst. I always believed that the fear of doing something badly, not perfectly, is a prime driver for procrastination. But if the researchers are to be believed, the fear of doing nothing trumps the ills that perfectionism induces.
I once asked a talented and fairly famous colleague how he managed to regularly produce such highly regarded 8,000 word features. “Well,” he said, “first, I put it off for two or three weeks. Then I sit down to write. That’s when I get up and go clean the garage. After that, I go upstairs, and then I come back downstairs and complain to my wife for a couple of hours. Finally, but only after a couple more days have passed and I’m really freaking out about missing my deadline, I ultimately sit down and write.
Over the years, I developed a theory about why writers are such procrastinators: We were too good in English class. This sounds crazy, but hear me out.
In this short essay, Stephen King delivers advice for any writer who wants to be successful at writing good fiction. King does that in his signature style – clear and direct.
I know it sounds like an ad for some sleazy writers’ school, but I really am going to tell you everything you need to pursue a successful and financially rewarding career writing fiction, and I really am going to do it in ten minutes, which is exactly how long it took me to learn. It will actually take you twenty minutes or so to read this essay, however, because I have to tell you a story, and then I have to write a second introduction. But these, I argue, should not count in the ten minutes.
“Then there was the romance between the carton of smoothie and me.” Neil begins his flash fiction “Ferris Wheel” with this amusing lead. He goes on to narrate his unique romance with the “box of the carton”. He regularly writes flash fiction, with each having a unique premise and wonderful narration. Another of flash fiction Two Earthlings tells a story of the visit of two aliens and their encounter with the dwellers of our planet - one that makes them wonder if the earthlings were “sentient or hostile or what”. Give all of Neil’s published work a read.
“Forest is an app helping you stay away from your smartphone and stay focused on your work.” It is a unique take on the timer app, where you plant a tree as you lock your phone down. If you want to quit the app, your tree will die. The belief is that the guilt acts as a deterrent to not access the phone until your focused session is done. The team behind the app also “partners with a real-tree-planting organization, Trees for the Future, to plant real trees on Earth”. A free app that, for sure, is worth a try.
One Final Inspiration
One of my main inspirations as a writer is the old ladies & supernatural beings in stories whose role is to give the traveling hero a protective charm, spell or incantation to carry with them on the lonely road. That is what I wish to do, truly. Give charms for the road.
Have any recommendations or feedback for me? I’d love to hear from you. Just hit reply, or you can even email me.
Thank you for reading and sharing.
-Amit
I need to stop treating the weekends as special. I stay up late on the night before, ergo I get up late. I am getting more lone time, I convince myself. I have now realized that's not the case. The late nights can give me some hours when all are asleep. But I enjoy the early mornings much more.
I am fresh, I can sit and relax with calmness surrounding me. No one's awake. Not in my house or on the outside. The only "noise" is the crickets in the dark, busy with their routine; that calms me.
I get to hear the nature wake itself up to the rising dawn. I need not plug my ears to shut out any distracting sounds. Every sound is stimulating; I read better, I write better. As someone who gets distracted by the slightest of the noises, that's also the best time to get into a meditative state, something I am trying to do daily now.
My habit of treating weekends as different from the regular work days has been ruining the routine that keeps me freshest throughout the day.
I always wonder what drives the journalists that sit in their air-conditioned newsrooms to go on a monologue. Questioning every other person, related to every news that has happened today. Or yesterday. Or in the last week. Or in the last year. The freshness, the relevance of the news they are reporting on, commenting on does not matter to them. What matters is their perceived notion that a journalism degree gives them a right to question, to mock, and these days, even scold everyone else.
They scold; absolutely pointing and shouting at their "guests". Of course, even these "guests" know they are only here for getting scolded. There are those guests that get all the attention, all the respect. And then there are the remaining asses warming the chairs in the studios. Many only get to talk for once or twice. I wonder do they themselves care. Or are they just picked randomly from the support staff?
It is tiring to watch the debates on the news shows. Or the monologues that precede them. I've anyway long stopped watching any form of news for that matter. These anchors, though, need to remember that they are anchors, not judges.
We never call anything that’s good ‘content’. Nobody walks out of a movie they loved and says, ‘Wow! What great content!’ Nobody listens to ‘content’ on their way to work in the morning. Do you think anybody ever called Ernest Hemingway a ‘content creator’? If they did, I bet he would punch ‘em in the nose.
Another issue of Slanting Nib & A Keyboard newsletter is out today. It features a few well-written essays that talk about the partisan debates around the different forms of the books, starting with their evolution over the years, from "the clay tablets to the e-book format". The physical, emotional and psychological effects of eBooks and paper; a love letter to audiobooks. This issue has it all.
Do give it a read online. If what you read interests you, please subscribe. If you are already subscribed and have been enjoying the issues, I will appreciate if you forward them to your friends.
“One technology doesn’t replace another, it complements. Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.” – Stephen Fry
People who love books and reading cannot love eBooks, goes the adage. Penelope Lively calls them “some sort of bloodless nerd”. So much has been written and published by the authors and the public in general on their love for the specific forms of the books. Some people have had contrasting thoughts; talking about eBooks, Douglas Adams had famously said that one should “not confuse the plate for the food”. But he had also quipped that “we notice e-book readers, we don’t notice books”.
So, what is it, then? This issue features a few well-written essays that talk about the partisan debates around the different forms of the books, starting with their evolution over the years. I want to remain unbiased; I will try to be that. After all, I am just the guy serving the plates; it’s the food on those plates that matters.
With a fascinating look at how books have evolved over the years from “the clay tablets to the e-book format,” SFBook Review presents a snapshot of the publishing history. “As books have now reached the 21st century with the creation of the increasingly popular e-book, we thought it would be a good idea to take a look back at the long and involved history of the humble book.” Here’s a snippet on the birth of the “cheap” novel.
With the continued spread of the written word, along with a growth in education and the continued reduction in print costs, the first mass-market paperbacks were born. In Britain there were two distinct markets these mass publications were aimed at, the juvenile market with the “story papers” and the working class adult which were known as a “penny dreadful”, “penny number” or a “penny blood” - due to the fact that they each cost a “penny”. Eventually these novels were exclusively aimed at the working class youth market and the term story paper became interchangeable with penny dreadful.
Equally insightful is the evolution of audiobooks. Did you know that the first audiobook was recorded in 1952?
Undoubtedly, the individual preference of a form of the book matters the most. Nonetheless, the heartily debated topic, a cultural divide of sorts, is researched equally well, forcing us to rethink how we respond to the written word. Which form does our brains prefer? Financial Times has a detailed write-down of the physical effects of the increased screen times or connectivity associated with the eBooks; at the same time, it also presents more emotional or the psychological aspects associated with the inherent differences of the media forms.
As researchers examine the differences reading in different media make, they are also having to distinguish carefully between the different things that we do when we read. Take, for instance, the difference between “deep reading”, when you really get immersed in a text, and “active learning”, when you make notes in margins or put down the book to cross-reference with something else.
In this love letter to audiobooks, Maggie Gram confesses her love, her liking for audiobooks and attempts to address the criticisms that this format of the books receives. Is reading the only true form of reading? Or “reading is only reading when it requires the constant assertion of will,” as many critics of the medium might say. That’s the question, the disapproval that Maggie attempts to answer in this heartfelt essay.
Less dude-like people, people less invested in making fun of you, will just cock their heads to the side and ask you why you do it. As if liking books were not enough! As if it weren’t the best thing in the world to have someone read to you! As if you had something better to do! I thought about starting this essay by insisting that I listen to audio books for work, so that I could not be mistaken for that other kind of person, that kind of person who listens audio books because it brings her some kind of unsophisticated pleasure. I am not, I wanted you to know, your Aunt Paula. My kitchen is not decorated with rooster towel racks and rooster potholders and rooster trim. I am a very serious person.
As I read through the collection of short stories from Olivia Parkes, I knew what a brilliant writer she is. She leaves you spellbound by her inimitable narration of the short story “Schrödinger’s Cat, But for Marriage” about a failing marriage. With some brilliant analogies and flirty humour, she brings a smile to your face; makes you pause and read the passage again at various points. I couldn’t word the recommendation better than the Halimah Marcus. “Read this story to find out what the breakdown of social order in a marriage looks like. Read this story to find out whether the cat lives or dies. Read this story to take your arguments a little less seriously, and to cherish the paradoxical moments, as with Schrödinger’s cat, when you both get to be right.
A library is many things; it has adapted itself with changing times and is now a lot more. Going beyond the selection of paperbacks and hardcovers, many libraries also serve digital editions of the books in both text and audio form now. Libby is a perfect companion app for such public libraries. With your existing library card, you can borrow eBooks and audiobooks from the digital media collection of the library. So why spend money on buying digital books?
PS: Shouldn’t an app that’s an extension to a public library be featured in an issue all about the library? Well, it should. But what’s the fun in that.
One Final Inspiration
Anyway. Let this be a lesson to all novelists to read the full context of the things you’re looking up for your books but if you do make mistakes, at least let them be hilarious.
