Why ask this fundamental and existential question you might say? But this question kept haunting me as I returned from a session on "How to be a first time author?" held in February this year in a packed auditorium of IIM Bangalore with panelists such as Ravi Subramanian, Aroon Raman, Sashi Dehpande and Usha K.R.
The Alumni Association Secretary set the context for the session quite succinctly when he said that this was the first time he had seen the auditorium so full since the 3 Idiots shooting. It seems that last year they had hosted a 'drink all you can' party for the alumni which saw much less attendance than the literary evening which we had all volunteered to be part of, braving the horrific Bangalore traffic on a Friday evening.
Publishers can be rest assured or beware - Bangalore seems to be brimming with budding writers just waiting to send across their manuscripts to the publishers' overflowing desks.
I was quite struck by the divergent views presented by 2 of the panelists - Sashi Deshpande and Ravi Subramanian. I will share the summary of their comments here for other fellow bloggers.
Sashi Desphande spoke clearly and from her heart - write if you have to and if you have a command over the language. Do not resort to the language of the sms which literally sounds like the grunting of animals. She mentioned that writing is an intensely lonely process and one cannot expect help or even compassion as you write, so patience and ability to handle rejection are immensely important traits for writers. The world can survive very well without your book, was one comment she made that will stay forever with me. She said that she did not believe in the current crop of writers' need to be marketers for their own books as publishers always took care of that worry for her.
Ravi Subramanian on the other hand, approached it like a management problem. Majority of the bestsellers, he said, over the last few years, have been written by MBAs. So what knowledge do MBAs have or what frustrations do they suffer from that make them suddenly emerge as writers? Well, he talked about the marketing mantra - define your audience, write about what you know and then sell it yourself. Do not expect your publisher to sell your book for you. He emphasized on the need for a good plot more than eloquent language, a point hotly debated between the panelists who finally agreed to distinguish between literary fiction and popular fiction. The former being Sashi Deshpande's genre and the latter, Ravi's. He spoke about the economics of selling books and why pricing plays such an important role and why it is important to make sure bookstores stock your books while adding ample and not too subtle references to his own bestseller status.
Contrary opinions both. Both rang true in parts, and the audience, most of them probably well into the first draft of their first books, of course had a lot of questions to ask making it an engaging discussion.
All the panelists agreed that there are no shortcuts to getting published though self publishing and online publishing and new-age publishers and agents might be more open to different types of genre today. And finally, they all said that the much talked about book advances that Amish Tripathy and even Ravi/Chetan Bhagat would have got are more an exception than a rule. Having a day job is always better as one starts one's long and unknown writing journey.
Which brings me back to my original question. Why do I write? Sashi or Ravi, whose views do I lean towards?
The Alumni Association Secretary set the context for the session quite succinctly when he said that this was the first time he had seen the auditorium so full since the 3 Idiots shooting. It seems that last year they had hosted a 'drink all you can' party for the alumni which saw much less attendance than the literary evening which we had all volunteered to be part of, braving the horrific Bangalore traffic on a Friday evening.
Publishers can be rest assured or beware - Bangalore seems to be brimming with budding writers just waiting to send across their manuscripts to the publishers' overflowing desks.
I was quite struck by the divergent views presented by 2 of the panelists - Sashi Deshpande and Ravi Subramanian. I will share the summary of their comments here for other fellow bloggers.
Sashi Desphande spoke clearly and from her heart - write if you have to and if you have a command over the language. Do not resort to the language of the sms which literally sounds like the grunting of animals. She mentioned that writing is an intensely lonely process and one cannot expect help or even compassion as you write, so patience and ability to handle rejection are immensely important traits for writers. The world can survive very well without your book, was one comment she made that will stay forever with me. She said that she did not believe in the current crop of writers' need to be marketers for their own books as publishers always took care of that worry for her.
Ravi Subramanian on the other hand, approached it like a management problem. Majority of the bestsellers, he said, over the last few years, have been written by MBAs. So what knowledge do MBAs have or what frustrations do they suffer from that make them suddenly emerge as writers? Well, he talked about the marketing mantra - define your audience, write about what you know and then sell it yourself. Do not expect your publisher to sell your book for you. He emphasized on the need for a good plot more than eloquent language, a point hotly debated between the panelists who finally agreed to distinguish between literary fiction and popular fiction. The former being Sashi Deshpande's genre and the latter, Ravi's. He spoke about the economics of selling books and why pricing plays such an important role and why it is important to make sure bookstores stock your books while adding ample and not too subtle references to his own bestseller status.
Contrary opinions both. Both rang true in parts, and the audience, most of them probably well into the first draft of their first books, of course had a lot of questions to ask making it an engaging discussion.
All the panelists agreed that there are no shortcuts to getting published though self publishing and online publishing and new-age publishers and agents might be more open to different types of genre today. And finally, they all said that the much talked about book advances that Amish Tripathy and even Ravi/Chetan Bhagat would have got are more an exception than a rule. Having a day job is always better as one starts one's long and unknown writing journey.
Which brings me back to my original question. Why do I write? Sashi or Ravi, whose views do I lean towards?
Well. books have always been my best friends. My earliest dream
was to be a librarian, just to be able to sit amid thousands of books and
read new ones every day. My idea of a
perfect day was a cup of tea, a comfortable arm chair and a good book.
Armed with it, I would often forget the real world and enter
into a world where tales of courage, love, passion and intrigue would leave me
spellbound.
And the more I read, the more I wondered about the art of
storytelling and about the authors- the people who could write such amazing
stories and create such magical characters that gave me so many hours of
happiness and joy as I grew up.
A mother now, I find my child also invariably being drawn
towards books and stories. She can already recite fairy-tales backwards so I
find myself spinning new stories in my head now about my experiences and joys;
about people and places that have been a part of my life just to keep her inquisitive mind occupied.
So why do I write? I no longer have a choice. I have to write. It doesn't make me feel happy or peaceful in the least, it keeps me awake at nights and make me dream up really crooked characters during perfectly normal and boring meetings at office. It makes me observe more and share secret laughs with myself or with my close friends about things which I might have never noticed before.
But I can no longer run away from the need to write..Is that enough?
Yes, I finally do want to join the people who always inspired me,
the writers whose words weaved magic in my ears, whose stories remained with me
when I slept.
And I do hope that someone would find the same magic in my book one day that I used to look for always in the books I read. Till then, I dream of the day, my book would be
added to the shelf in a library and be someone’s idea of a perfect day
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