Book Review: THE WRITER'S JOURNEY: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE LITERARY GREATS

Title: The Writer's Journey: In the Footsteps of the Literary Greats

Author: Travis Elborough

Publisher: White Lion Publishing

Pages: 343

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

I loved the premise of this book. The role of the journey and its potential for amassing research about character, description and settings alike as well as its potential for offering a fresh perspective.

Many of the writers included in these pages have uncovered a new story or book, or even a new career as a writer, from their journeys.

Of course, it’s written from a Western lens, so the author tells us about the dangers of dying of dysentery, cholera etc. Also, most of the writers are either American or European.

Incidentally, JK Rowling, the only living author, among deceased writers, most of whom lived in earlier centuries, was out of place. The criteria for choosing authors to feature in the book remains unclear.

The layout of the book is designed like a tabloid, with a long headline, mostly alliterative, and a sketch of the writer’s face in monochrome. Below this masthead are small icons of the mode of transportation employed by the writer, followed by the text in double column. The text is interspersed with maps, aerial photos of the location etc.

The writers are included in alphabetical order, which led to a sense of disconnect between the chapters.

The purpose behind each writer’s journey is varied:

Holiday/Outing: Hans Christian Andersen, Bram Stoker, Virginia Woolf

Son’s education: Maya Angelou

Sent by a publication: WH Auden and Christopher Isherwood, Zora Neale Hurston

Research: Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens

Write a travel book: Graham Greene

Work: Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, JK Rowling

Recuperation: Jane Austen, Elizabeth Bishop, Gustave Flaubert, Federico Garcia Lorca

Escaping from danger: James Baldwin

To improve his character: Charles Baudelaire

Travel and adventure: Basho aka Matsuo Kinsaku, Jack Kerouac, Katherine Mansfield

 

The reasons I found most interesting were those of:

Lewis Carroll: went to Russia to build bridges with the Eastern Orthodox Church

Arthur Conan Doyle: went to Switzerland to get an idea for killing the character of Sherlock Holmes.

F Scott Fitzgerald: went to Paris because the cost of living was cheaper there than in the US.

Jack London: went to the Yukon to take advantage of the Gold rush.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery: took on the Transcontinental Flying Race.

Sam Selvon: went to London to fulfil his literary ambitions. 

The book doesn’t really spell out how the location led to the writing, just that here’s place A which was written about in book B. I would have liked something more detailed.

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: THE WORLDS OF GEORGE RR MARTIN

Title: The Worlds of George RR Martin

Author: Tom Huddleston

Publisher: Frances Lincoln

Pages: 208

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

I must confess that I haven’t ever read anything by George RR Martin, nor have I seen the series that it inspired. My excuse is that I don’t like fantasy.

But after reading this book about his inspiration, I’m now inspired by Martin’s prolific ability and more equipped in my own journey as a writer.

In this book, the author introduces us to the breath of Martin’s inspiration, stemming from his voracious reading of history, comic-book characters, the works of great science and fantasy authors, cartography and the study of atlases, among other things. The author describes Martin as a voracious gatherer of knowledge, of experience, or story.

The book is supplemented with an eclectic collection of photos of Martin’s childhood home, various paintings of subjects that inspired him etc. Among others, there are photos of him at the signing table at the 2014 world science Fiction Convention, as also the cast of Game of Thrones on HBO and covers of the first editions of his books. There are photos of paintings depicting the history on which his oeuvre is based.

 

The book details his life, education, publishing successes and failures and his tryst with writing for TV, besides the influences on his life and writing and the episodes of The Twilight Zone that he scripted.

It’s fantastic to read about how Martin’s books grew and the powerful storytelling that drove that growth. The book explores Martin’s journey to writing the book and the Game of Thrones series, their production, impact and relationship with the source novels. the Epilogue talks about the astonishing success of the book and its adaptation to the silver screen (did you know that the first episode scored 2.2 million viewers on the first night itself?).

The book was divided into chapters, named after locations in the book, such as the Wall, Winterfell and the Iron Islands. There is no fixed format to the layout of the pages. Quotes accompanying photos take up whole pages, sometimes even double spreads.

Ideas are cheap … it’s the execution that is all-important.

We’re all capable of doing great things, and of doing bad things. We have the angels and demons inside of us, and our lives are a succession of choices.

The world is one great web, and a man dare not touch a single strand lest all the others tremble.

Every man who walks the earth casts a shadow on the world.

I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time … they have the whole things designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed ... They know if they planted a fantasy seed or a mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don’t know how many branches it’s going to have, they find out as it grows. And I’m much more a gardener than an architect.

Never having read the books or watched the series, and being largely unfamiliar with European history, which we didn’t study at school, I wasn’t always able to figure out what was happening. There was a lot I couldn’t relate to, but the author’s style was engaging.

I got a sense of the depth of reading and research that informed Martin’s work, in terms of history, the mythology of Norse, Saxon and other cultures, the architecture and geography of the regions in which the books are set, and Martin’s own vast reading of historical fiction, fantasy and horror.

I want to point out just one error in the book. The author points out that the name given to a particular “city’s distinctive elephant-drawn carts, hathay, echoes the Hindu word for elephant, hathi.” The right word here is Hindi. Hindi is a language. Hinduism is a religion followed by Hindu people.

 

Towards the end, the author tells us about how far the books are inspired by the real world. The threat of "Winter is coming" in the book is synonymous with the real danger of climate change in the real world.

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: MORNING PAGES

Title: Morning Pages

Author: Kate Feiffer

Publisher: Regalo Press

Pages: 384

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

I loved the premise of this book, but I wasn’t satisfied with the execution.

Morning pages is a technique popularized by Julia Cameron in her book, The Artist’s Way, where she encourages writers to write unstructured every morning as part of a process that helps them to get out of their own way.

 

Playwright Elise Hellman is commissioned by The Players Playhouse to write a play for the 25^th anniversary of the theatre; Elise is one of five playwrights, whose first plays were huge hits at the theatre when it first opened, to be selected for this honour. The earning of $50,000 for an original play is a huge motivation. But when Elise gets down to writing, she finds out that she can no longer write. She simply doesn’t feel inspired enough. There’s far too much going on in her life for her to be able to write the way she did.

Before long, her real life starts influencing the play she’s writing, until both are chaotic mirror images of each other.

Elise finds herself struggling. She cannot focus on her writing, particularly when her son, Marsden, won’t communicate with her, and her mother has dementia.

 

The writing is intentionally journal-like, stemming as it does from the morning pages. Each chapter of the book is a day of the Morning Pages. Interspersed with the journal entries are small snatches of the play that Elise is writing.

The letter from the theatre is dated January 5, 2013, and Elise is told that they need her finished play by December 1 that year. That’s a few days short of eleven months. And yet, on Day 1 of her Morning Pages, Elise informs us that she has 65 days to complete her play. She doesn’t tell us how she ended up losing so much time. Why did she start writing so late in the year?

We get to know of her problems in real time. We get drama with her mother, her aunt Rosemary, her cousin, Julie, her ex-husband Elliot and his girlfriend, Midge, and her son, who seems to have no motivation regarding his future.

With nothing but her morning pages to guide her, Elise’s play soon begins to run parallel with her own life. With fiction imitating real life, it becomes tricky for us to keep the characters straight. Because there are the ‘real’ characters and their close counterparts from the world of the play. And every character in the play is influenced by someone in Elise’s own sphere. For instance, her main character, Laurie, also has divorced parents, just like Elise.

With her dead love life, ex-husband and his girlfriend, and Elise’s father and his current wife, Nicolette, besides her mother and son adding their own antics into the mix, there’s drama aplenty in Elise’s life but no signs of the play writing itself out. So much for the morning pages.

One thing I must say. Her morning pages were more entertaining than the play which was literally based on her own life.

 

The play was dull for the most part. In one page of writing from the play, we read of Laurie staunchly defending her father in an argument with her mother. She says, of her father, he fell in love with someone else. And there’s not the slightest hint of irony when she says that. Does Laurie have no sense of loyalty towards her mother? How could Elise write such a line, considering that she is still cut up about Elliot falling in love with Midge?

We are told that Elliot made his fortune with a unique business model that he founded, one that matches consumers with an appliance based on their personality type. This was inane. It sounded like one of those dumb quizzes that aim to solve for you the burning question of How much of a Gryffindor are you? Or what breed of dog would you have been had you been a dog? I cannot imagine making money out of this business model.

Despite the basic plot hinging upon the writing process, there wasn’t much in the plot about Elise’s writing process or about dementia, which her mother has.

There were some parts I liked, many I didn’t, and large parts that felt disconnected. Marsden’s sudden change of heart and behaviour were unconvincing. The story, as a journal, felt removed from the reader. 

Also, I tried but I couldn’t relate to any of the characters. They were all unremarkable.

 

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL IN 20 PIES

Title: How to Write a Novel in 20 Pies

Author: Amy Wallen

Illustrator: Emil Wilson

Publisher: Andrew McMeel Publishing

Pages: 240

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

The whole point of this part writing craft, part cookbook, and part memoir is to draw parallels between the process of writing a novel and that of baking a pie from scratch. On the surface, the concept of the book is so simple. You might think it won’t fit on the shelf of writing craft books. But its strength lies in its simplicity, in the warm and friendly vibe it gives out. The author’s style, so approachable, reassures us that novel writing is possible and, if we persevere, we could do it too.

I found this book adorable; even the dedications hark back to the theme. At regular intervals, the pages are peppered with helpful icons that tell us, Eat Pie Here.

The chapters have creative names such as Pie as Saving Grace, Pie Butt in Chair etc. Easy As Pie and Other Lies reminds us of the misconceptions that writing is easy.

None of the information that the author shares is new. She tells us we have to write a lot and often, that we must be loose with our ideas and not hang on to anything too tightly, that we must read like writers. She shares one important thing that other writing books don’t reinforce often enough, that we should save the bits we cut in a Trash file, in case we think we need them later. It is sound advice, but it feels diluted because of all the other fun stuff.

Along the way, she hands out writing advice particularly relating to the long, slow road to publishing, and offers recommendations on which books to read to know more about the craft. She also takes us along on her own journey towards publishing MoonPies and Movie Stars, her first book, and relates her experience of teaching the craft of writing to students. Above all, she reiterates that she learned how to write a novel by writing a novel.

 

The 20 recipes in the book include Basic Pie Crust, Chicken Pot Pie, Lemon Meringue Pie, Mushroom Hand Pies, No Guarantee Peach Pie etc, including a recipe for making Humble Pie, the only recipe for which I have all the ingredients. The author shares her pie making journey too, the successes and failures in the early days, and how she practised and got better.

The illustrations, mostly with a red colour palette, were delightful and inviting, and complemented the book well. Emil Wilson has done a great job. The characters drawn by him look like Teletubbies but wear black glares and pretend they are into cloak-and-dagger stuff. There are sweet drawings of a book and a pie dancing together, and of a pie offering therapy to a book writer.

There is a fun boardgame for the writing process and interesting illustrations about famous authors and the imagined ingredients of their pies. For instance, Hemingway’s pie is made of booze, fish, game, cigar and more booze. Agatha Christie’s pie – Who knows?

 

The author has even included a comic strip about this book and why the publisher might have agreed to publish it, hoping to get pie, of course. On an amusing side note, the publisher is called McMeel. 

If you’re looking for hard core writing advice, this book isn’t it. But as a pie cookbook-cum-writing craft book, it is a sweet, savoury and fun read. 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: WRITE AWAY

Title: Write Away: One Novelist's Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life
Author: Elizabeth George
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 288
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I have read only one novel by Elizabeth George, and that was the 20^th in her famous Inspector Lynley series, The Punishment She Deserves. I came away from it deeply charmed by Inspector Lynley and Barbara Havers. The book had convinced me that the author was British. She does such a fabulous job of invoking the British flavour. It was on reading Write Away that I learned that she is American.

In Write Away, a book she wrote publishing the first 12 Lynley books (talk about expertise proven without a doubt), the author describes her approach to writing. The key to writing, she says, is character, not story.

The book is divided into 5 parts. Part I is An Overview of the Craft, Part II is Basics, Part III is Technique, Part IV is Process, Part V is Examples and Guides.

The book is peppered with extracts from good books. Here I’m listing them all, as a sort of Recommended Books List. The list includes Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich’s The Crown of Columbus, T Jefferson Parker’s Laguna Heat, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees, Martin Cruz Smith’s Rose as well as Havana Bay, Michael Dorris’ A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Robert Ferrigno’s The Horse Latitudes, PD James’ A Taste for Death, Ken Follett’s The Key to Rebecca, Ernest Hemingway’s Indian Camp, Stephen King’s The Dead Zone, Alice Hoffman’s Second Nature, Susan Isaacs’ Shining Through, Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible, Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, William Faulkner’s Light in August, EM Forster’s A Passage to India, Jim Harrison’s Revenge, and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

She also references Stephen King’s Misery, The Shining and Cujo, Evan Connell’s Mrs Bridge, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, William Faulkner’s Absalom! Absalom!, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, LM Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables books, Frank Herbert’s Dune, John le Carre’s Singer and Singer, James Clavell’s Shogun and King Rat, Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, Pat Conroy’s The Lords of Discipline, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, James Frey’s How to Write a Damn Good Novel, Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Peter Benchley’s Jaws, Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, Janette Turner Hospital’s Oyster, Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm, Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda, even Shakespeare’s Richard III and Macbeth, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Craig Lesley’s The Sky Fisherman, John Irving’s The Cider House Rules, Dorothy L Sayers’ Five Red Herrings, Frederick Forsyth’s The Fourth Protocol, Dean Koontz’s Twilight Eyes, Bryce Courtenay’s The Power of One, William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, and naturally her own novels as well.

Her own books also find rich mention here. She quotes from For the sake of Elena, Well-schooled in murder, A great deliverance, A traitor to memory, Payment in Blood, In the presence of the enemy, Deception on his mind, and references Missing Joseph, Playing for the Ashes, Remember, I’ll always love you, In pursuit of the proper sinner and A suitable vengeance.

There are spoilers with reference to Missing Joseph and For the Sake of Elena.

Each chapter begins with a quote from her Journal of a Novel from 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998 and 2001.

At first, I thought these were published books. A Google search brought up John Steinbeck’s Journal of a Novel, which he wrote while writing East of Eden. It was only in Chapter 5 that I figured out that this was her own Journal of a Novel, a practice she began with the third in her Inspector Lynley series. Since then she has been writing the Journal concurrently with every novel she embarks on. 

The author shares the step outline that she developed for her novel, A Place of Hiding and the running plot outline of In the presence of the enemy.

In an attempt to prove her point that anyone can write, provided they have a tight handle on the art and craft, and can string sentences together for maximum effect, she gives us a run-down on basic grammar as well. This includes a brief lesson on simple, compound and complex sentences, and other variations, complex-compound, deliberately fragmented and deliberately run-on. 

This section was unnecessary and seemed too patronising.

The highlight for me was how she took us through her entire process from the moment she has an idea to the expansion of that idea and then to the writing and editing. She gives us a taste of her writing journey, how she gravitated to books, how she began writing, and how her love for books and writing grew.

She also answers a few of the questions that she is often asked by agents and readers alike. These relate to how she got her first agent, to who her favourite authors are, what her schedule looks like, her opinion about writing critique groups and the big one, why she writes British novels.

This one is a good addition to all the literature on the art and craft of writing.

Book Review: WATCH ME

Title: Watch Me

Author: Jody Gehrman
Publisher: St Martin's Griffin
Pages: 310

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Sam Grist has signed up for a creative writing course, not to improve his writing, but to get closer to the teacher, Kate Youngblood, with whom he is obsessed. He has devoured all her books and literally knows everything about them and her.

Her first novel, Pay Dirt, captivates him to the point of madness. He drums up his obsession to believe that they could run away to New York, where they would eat, write, have sex, repeat.

At first Kate, aged 38, can’t deny the attraction. Sam, aged 22, is so enigmatic, so forceful, she feels drawn to him. She tells herself that he is vulnerable. Divorced after having caught her ex-husband in the very act, she is lonely and feels undesired. She longs for male attention, to know that she matters as a woman. This is her weakness and Sam takes advantage of it. The fact that Zoe, her best friend is married and has a newborn baby who needs her completely also exposes her weakness.

Kate is excited about Sam's writing. She fantasises about being his mentor, helping him to hone and sharpen his writing. But Sam is not looking for a mentor so much as a lover.

But then Sam crosses the line, hacking into her email, breaking into her home and office, doing whatever it takes to get closer to her. In doing so, he is willing to remove the obstacles that stand in his way by any means possible. He will do whatever needs to be done to bring his fantasy to life, he and Kate together, writing bestsellers, and having a sexual, mutually obsessive relationship.

Hurt by her divorce, Kate worries that far from being attractive, she is no longer even visible to the opposite sex. Deeply messed up, at one level, she almost encourages his advances, or at least isn’t quite so forceful in discouraging him, just because it feels great to be wanted. She seems to be under his spell. 

She thinks, My life before thirty had a bouncy, upbeat soundtrack, a sinewy bass line with sex at the core. Now I’m in a silent movie.

The trouble is that even though she knows that there is a lot that’s off about him (To me, blood’s another substance, like rain or sap or ink), she can’t deny her feelings. This can only get worse. But how?

Sam’s writing is a close rendition of the truth. Kate wonders if he has killed before. 

Unable to seek advice from anyone, Kate is at the end of her tether. Zoe, is supportive, but can’t do much for her, hemmed as she is between a newborn and her own sleep deprivation.

To make matters worse for Kate, the head of the English department detests her and thwarts her at every step.

How will Kate extricate herself from this situation?

The book is written from the first person present tense PoVs of Sam and Kate.

As a character, I liked Kate. Her vulnerability, the fact that she was flawed enough to make faulty choices. I liked the fact that she loved books, loved the smell of them, loved writing, the art and craft of it.

Kate looks for the perfect metaphor even in the midst of the worst situations. She clings to her art, trying to make sense of the chaos around her.

Sam is a powerful character. Totally amoral, there is nothing he won't do to achieve his aims. The language from his PoV has a rough edge. His insults are sharp: She is young... it will be lifetimes before she's even progressed past infancy.

In a self-revelatory moment, he lets us see him fully. It's not healthy to show people the basement of your soul. Keep them upstairs. In the kitchen or the bedroom. Never give them a tour of your cellar, where the air is fetid and dark. Don't point out the cockroaches skittering across the dripping, slimy walls. Don't show them where you've hidden the bodies.

Another thing I liked about this book was that there was so much related to the craft and the sheer exhilaration of writing. Kate needs to get a thousand words done each morning. Waking up dying to get back to the story only I can tell… because I have got a paragraph inside my head that has to come out. That paragraph turns into a page, and that page turns into a scene… I’m flying through the story, free-falling without a net.

The book captures the writer's life so perfectly. It never goes away, that sense that you have turned yourself inside out for the world, that you have slaved to expose every muscle, tendon and vein; in response, the world casually throws acid at your steaming innards.

Elsewhere she speaks of a war with words, my torrid affair with verbiage, my love-hate relationship with my characters.


She tells us about how the ideas come to her, all sagged and wilted after a few pages, their characters losing steam, wandering off into the fog.

She imagines her life as a book jacket blurb and describes it as trying to stuff a bag of squirming cats into a hatbox. She tries to milk her own life, squirreling away the details for later use.

I enjoyed reading about the classroom sessions in which the students all dissect and critique one another’s writing. The conversations on the craft of writing I lapped up.

The prose is beautiful. Isn’t it sad, the way we grasp the beauty of everything too late? We stumble through life like sleepwalkers, floating on the mundane, resentful of everyday inconveniences… Only in the last seconds of our lives do we realize how much we want to live.

The figures of speech were a treat: Vivienne tore through men in a way that was both casual and desperate, like a bulimic gorging on junk food she'll soon puke.

This story about obsession and dangerous desire was intriguing. On the lookout for more from this author.

Book Review: Bird by Bird and a BIG REVEAL

Title: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Author: Anne Lamott
Publisher: Anchor
Pages: 237

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

There were so many things I could relate to in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott: the thrill of seeing one’s name in print, of claiming ownership through a byline. Of the thrill of writing on days when it seems effortless, and the agony of days when the scratched words make you want to tear your hair out.

She doesn’t tell you that it’s easy to be a writer or even that the rewards can make up for the drudgery. The simple act of sitting down to write and the 1001 thoughts that conspire to get in the way.

The book, she tells us, consists of almost everything that she talks about in her writing classes. The whole is tied together with a thread of quiet humour that makes you chuckle out loud. The whole thing is peppered with charming personal stories and anecdotes from films and books, as well as real-life experiences.

In Part One – Writing, she tells us about the importance of shitty first drafts and the problem of seeking perfectionism. How when you write shitty first drafts, you find yourself honing one thing, and then when you zoom out, slowly you begin to notice other things around it. How in the writing of one thing, you will remember other things that weren’t in your mind, when you started.

She describes the act of character and plot development, how they must both drive the story forward. You, as the writer, must watch like a mute spectator as your characters come alive. Here she passes on a formula, originally defined by writer Alice Adams, who talks of ABDCE, namely, Action, Background, Development, Climax, Ending. She also touches upon Dialogue, which I personally find the most challenging.

In Part Two – The Writing Frame of Mind, she stays that there must be something at the centre of your story, something about which you care passionately, which must shine through. Our deepest beliefs must drive our writing.

In a delightful reference to an old Mel Brooks film, she reminds us to “Listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it.” It is a reminder to us to shut down our rational mind, and listen to our intuition which will lead us on in a far truer and more satisfying manner.

In Part Three – Help Along the Way, we learn about the importance of writing down every little tidbit we consider important on index cards. I’ve learned this the hard way, and vouch for this bit of advice. Everything I have written down, I still have; everything I have trusted to memory, I have forgotten.

She also tells us about the importance of writing groups, and of being able to rely on a few individuals who we can trust with our shitty first drafts, and of how to counter writer’s block.

In Part Four – Publication – and Other Reasons to Write, she tells us about Finding Your Voice, Giving, Publication, how it is not the end, but a beginning, a starting again on the blank page.

And then in Part Five – The Last Class, she tells us that as writers, we must keep writing.

When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.

There’s so much that you would like to quote:

For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth.

Writing is, for some of us, the latch that keeps the door of the pen closed, keeps those crazy ravenous dogs contained.

A big heart is both a clunky and a delicate thing; it doesn’t protect itself and it doesn’t hide. It stands out, like a baby’s fontanel, where you can see the soul pulse through.

The style of this book has so many memoir-like elements mixed within the book on writing that by the end of it, I thought that Sam, her little son, was a pretty cool little guy, and was saddened at the death of Pam, her closest friend.

So much of the advice while being pertinent to writing is just as relevant to life. As when she tells us about how her dying friend, Pam, taught her how to live better, told her that she didn’t have time enough to waste on unnecessary things. Her response, “Okay, hmmm, let’s see. Dying tomorrow. What should I do today?” can help us not only write better, but also live better.

And how on days when the muse just won’t oblige, you write unrelated stuff, stuff from your old memories, while you wait for my unconscious to open a door and beckon. That’s when the party starts, as any writer who has experienced the beckoning can vouch for.

I want to end this review with one of my favourite quotes from the book: This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won’t wash them away.

It is a belief that has consumed me too.

And that is why the review of this delightful book is as good a time and place as any to make my big announcement.

With the last i being dotted and the last t crossed, I am now working towards self-publishing my first Book. It's a book that has grown out of this blog. A dream I’ve had for as long as I can remember, and it’s taken a long, long time to mature.

I hope for your prayers as I take my fledgling steps towards achieving my dream.

Daddy's Day In

Image Courtesy: Morguefile

How on earth does she do it? Fool that I am, I questioned her capability in managing the household and keeping the brats in line. How could I have known it was going to be like this?


I manage the sharks at work, face the barrage of deadlines that keep beating down on me, and I thought mine was the most difficult job of all.

Now I see it. By the time I would return from work at the hour when the primetime serials on TV had begun to wrap up for the day, the boys would be sleeping, I would tiptoe into their room, watch their angelic faces deep in the throes of sleep, their chests gently heaving up and down in a rhythmic motion. And I would shush her up when she tried to tell me about how hard her day had been, how she’d spent all day cleaning their mess, when she wasn’t shouting at them to clean up themselves, how she feared them more when they were quiet because then it meant that they were cooking up another hare-brained scheme designed to frazzle their mother.

And then one day when the whining got to me, I yelled back at her. I told her she was incompetent. That’s what she was. She ought to see the kind of challenges I countered at work on a daily basis. Her voice dipped low and she reminded me that she had been tackling those very challenges at the same office where we had met and that she had given up her job five years ago and stayed home to look after the boys.

I hadn’t seen it as a sacrifice back then, and I told her so. One thing led to another and before I knew it, I had signed up to look after the kids for just ONE day.

When I woke up, breakfast was on the stovetop and there was a note too. “It’s Showtime. I’ll be at Mum’s.”

The house was silent, and fool that I am (but that you already know), I rubbed my hands with glee and told myself, this was going to be fun. The boys and I were in for some serious male bonding. They’d realize how much more fun their Dad was compared to their nagging Mom.

I heard the boys talking and rushed to their room. I opened the door and felt something soft and mushy hit me in the face. I heard laughter and all plans for a fun time vanished. I chased them to the bathroom, and fell hard on the soapy floor.

The day went by in a mad whirl. With me at the receiving end mostly.

They asked me where Mom was. She had a better grip on things, they said.

Mercifully, lunch was in the oven.

I sat at the kitchen table, eyes covered, the phone nestled between my head and neck. I needed her soon. Or else I’d burst.

“Come home, honey, I’m sorry.”

This post has been written for the Write Tribe prompt.

I see the finish line (NaBloPoMo Day 30)

One post every day in November

It has been statistically proven that most New Year’s Resolutions are abandoned on the 12^th of January. Strangely and coincidentally, I was able to stick to my NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) resolution of posting once every day only up to the 12^th of November. As long as this period lasted, I was happy. The muse seemed to be favouring me.

The children went out of their way to oblige me. It was amazing the way they consented to sleep early, leaving me time to switch on the computer and write. Every morning I knew exactly what I was going to blog about. Ideas popped up from everywhere – newspapers, books, a chance conversation. It was all too good to be true.

It didn’t last. By Day 13, my mind was what they call a blank canvas. Nothing suggested itself. Books, magazines and newspapers started holding their ideas close to their chests. I was at the end of my tether. Time was running out. What would I blog about? Oh well, I thought. Once I put the kids to sleep and sat in front of the computer, something would come up.

The kids wouldn’t go to sleep that night. I don’t know what high-sugar goodie they were fuelled up on but they just refused to sleep. I was ready to tear my hair out. How would inspiration strike if I was too busy running after the kids?

The day went on and many others followed its example. I began to fall behind. I began to wonder how I would ever be able to catch up? What on earth had possessed me to sign up for this One-post-every-day business?

Having embarked on this exercise, I was determined to finish it. It didn’t matter if I wasn’t able to win. Finishing the race became important. But that posed another challenge, a variation on old mathematics problems. If one woman cannot complete one post in one day, then how can she complete 18 posts in a week?

It was tremendously stressful. But I was determined to fail gloriously, if at all. The ploy worked.

Slowly the muse began to smile on me. Inspiration began to knock on a regular basis. Putting the kids to bed is something that I haven’t got a handle on yet. But I gave it my best shot.

Thankfully Blogger allowed me to cheat. It offered me the facility of blogging and backdating my post, and helped boost my confidence. The sight of all those live posts did me good, even though my handful of readers probably realized what I was doing. Also, I dipped into my own writing, stuff that has never been seen by anyone but my closest friends, and put it on the page.

The exercise helped me. I am so excited at nearing the finishing mark, even though everyone else has probably packed up and gone home, that I am actually contemplating going through this NaBloPoMo business once again. The discipline has helped. I have learned something that writing gurus have always shouted themselves hoarse about. The more you write, the more you can write. In the end, there is no substitute for actual work. If you want to write, you have to roll up your sleeves and do it. In front of a computer, if that’s what works for you. Or on little scraps of paper with a pen or a pencil (the method that works for me). No amount of wishing or dreaming can help.

Before this month, I used to think that as a harried mother of two, I would never be able to find time to write. Now I know better.

There will always be things to do. Kids will need to be fed and looked after, menus will have to be planned and prepared. Deadlines at work will swoop down upon me with no less ferocity. But if writing matters to me, I will make time for it. Just as I make time for all the other things that matter to me.

If you’ve been with me on this journey so far, I’d appreciate it if you’d continue to drop by to check on me. And while you’re here, leave a comment. Or two. Or three. Or more.

If you like my posts, leave a long comment.

If you love them, make the comment longer.

If you hate it, better not saying anything. There is enough of hate in the world. Let’s not have any of it on this blog. If you leave a hateful comment, I will delete it. Ha!

If you can’t think of anything encouraging, laudatory and positive thing to say, just leave one of those “Kilroy was here” type of comments. I’ll understand that you are a man/woman of few words.

Having said that, I hereby declare NaBloPoMo 2012 to be a success.

Now to see if the resolutions I make at the beginning of Year 2013 fare any better.

First Day, First Show (NaBloPoMo Day 1)

One post every day in November

In Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to young Franz Kappus, "If you wake up every morning thinking about being a writer, then you were meant to be a writer."


I don't wake up every morning thinking about being a writer. I would have liked to but I don't have the time to indulge in such luxuries. My alarm is set for 5.30 am every day, even on holidays, when it seems like a good idea to get some peace and quiet before the household noises overwhelm me completely. The routine has taken over my mornings. For the last few days, I have even succeeded in beating the alarm, a fact that sinks in only after I wake up in some apprehension, afraid that I have overslept.

The first coherent thought that I have when waking up is the hope that El Niño, my little toddler, will not wake up too soon. That always upsets my schedule. When that happens, he needs to be soothed back to sleep through a method that seemed so easy when I first embarked on it, but which really challenges me through its ability to gobble up huge chunks of my time. For those not in the know, that means nursing.

When I manage to get past this hurdle, I stumble through the dark and into the bathroom, my mind awhirl with thoughts of all the things that need to be done this day: what to give La Niña, my daughter, in her dabba, preferably something that will find favour with my fussy four-year-old and not make the return journey home. Whether I will be able to wake La Niña, always a difficult task, without disturbing El Niño, always an impossible one. What are the tasks I need to accomplish at work, especially those that I have been putting off over days. Each of these thoughts struggles with the others for one-upmanship. The thought of writing isn’t even in the fray.

Through the course of the day, there is more of the same. The commute is a good opportunity to get some valuable shut-eye on days when I get a seat, and a futile attempt to think of nothing on days when I don’t. Then there are groceries to be bought, menus to be planned, homework to be checked.

Fortunately, writers can still stake their claim to being called writers even if we don’t actually succeed in sitting down and writing. There is always some writing happening in the innermost recesses of our subconscious minds. On days when no word or punctuation mark mars the pristine whiteness of the page, there is always the dreaming of the right word, the listening in on other people’s conversations, the sponging off our own and others’ lives.

There is another thing that Rilke wrote in the same work. “Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”

I don’t think I would die if I were forbidden to write. It would be a terrible fate, though, if I were forbidden to partake of the many joys and stresses that are my life today.

And yet there is something in me which does not want to put a full stop to the writing. And that is why, this blog came into being. So that I could snatch time for writing in between mothering La Niña and El Niño and the thousand other things that make up our lives. The ploy hasn’t succeeded very well. I barely manage to come up with a few posts every month and only I know what a struggle it is to find time for them and what a relief it is to finally let them loose.

That is my only reason for participating in NaBloPoMo – National Blog Posting Month 2012, a BlogHer initiative in which I need blog only once every day. Whether that is possible, given my past record, I do not know. Whether NaBloPoMo will suffer the same fate that most New Year’s resolutions suffer, only time will tell. I am going to give it my best shot. Who knows? Maybe the self-imposed discipline will awaken the sleeping Muse and demolish all writers’ blocks, including the biggest one, Laziness.

So this is it for today. They say Tomorrow never comes. I'll know soon enough.