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The good thing about Indian dance shows
The last bell to the Government school opposite to our office rings. Children come rushing out. A group of around 15 boys are gathered near our building gate. We are curious to see what they are doing. One of the boys tells everyone to give him some space and does a reverse somersault three times. Looking at him, another comes out of the group and does a headstand. Few more boys follow; a lot more dance moves come out. Gradually, there is a healthy B-boying battle going on between the boys. The group disperses after a few stunts leaving me thinking. These boys are not more than 10-12 years old. Unlike mine, they come from a not-so-comfortable background. Some of them don’t even have shoes on. But when they did those moves, I was pleasantly surprised by their attitude and the smoothness with which they moved. It was a healthy competition, each observing and trying to learn from the other. And they have learnt all this by just watching the various dance shows that air on television. The good thing is these boys have found out so early in their lives about what they love to do. Hope they never lose it and shock the world with their moves.
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25 tips to become a better writer
- PD James: On just sitting down and doing it…
Don’t just plan to write—write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.
… - Steven Pressfield: On starting before you’re ready…
[The] Resistance knows that the longer we noodle around “getting ready,” the more time and opportunity we’ll have to sabotage ourselves. Resistance loves it when we hesitate, when we over-prepare. The answer: plunge in.
… - Esther Freud: On finding your routine…
Find your best time of the day for writing and write. Don’t let anything else interfere. Afterwards it won’t matter to you that the kitchen is a mess.
… - Zadie Smith: On unplugging…
Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.
… - Kurt Vonnegut: On finding a subject…
Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style. I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way — although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.
… - Maryn McKenna: On keeping your thoughts organized…
Find an organizational scheme for your notes and materials; keep up with it (if you are transcribing sound files or notebooks, don’t let yourself fall behind); and be faithful to it: Don’t obsess over an apparently better scheme that someone else has. At some point during your work, someone will release what looks like a brilliant piece of software that will solve all your problems. Resist the urge to try it out, whatever it is, unless 1) it is endorsed by people whose working methods you already know to be like your own and 2) you know you can implement it quickly and easily without a lot of backfilling. Reworking organizational schemes is incredibly seductive and a massive timesuck.
… - Bill Wasik: On the importance of having an outline…
Hone your outline and then cling to it as a lifeline. You can adjust it in mid-stream, but don’t try to just write your way into a better structure: think about the right structure and then write to it. Your outline will get you through those periods when you can’t possibly imagine ever finishing the damn thing — at those times, your outline will let you see it as a sequence of manageable 1,000 word sections.
… - Joshua Wolf Shenk: On getting through that first draft…
Get through a draft as quickly as possible. Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft. Literally, when I wrote the last page of my first draft of “Lincoln’s Melancholy” I thought, Oh, shit, now I get the shape of this. But I had wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first third to first half. The old writer’s rule applies: Have the courage to write badly.
… - Sarah Waters: On being disciplined…
Treat writing as a job. Be disciplined. Lots of writers get a bit OCD-ish about this. Graham Greene famously wrote 500 words a day. Jean Plaidy managed 5,000 before lunch, then spent the afternoon answering fan mail. My minimum is 1,000 words a day – which is sometimes easy to achieve, and is sometimes, frankly, like shitting a brick, but I will make myself stay at my desk until I’ve got there, because I know that by doing that I am inching the book forward. Those 1,000 words might well be rubbish – they often are. But then, it is always easier to return to rubbish words at a later date and make them better.
… - Jennifer Egan: On being willing to write badly…
[Be] willing to write really badly. It won’t hurt you to do that. I think there is this fear of writing badly, something primal about it, like: “This bad stuff is coming out of me…” Forget it! Let it float away and the good stuff follows. For me, the bad beginning is just something to build on. It’s no big deal. You have to give yourself permission to do that because you can’t expect to write regularly and always write well. That’s when people get into the habit of waiting for the good moments, and that is where I think writer’s block comes from. Like: It’s not happening. Well, maybe good writing isn’t happening, but let some bad writing happen… When I was writing “The Keep,” my writing was so terrible. It was God-awful. My working title for that first draft was, A Short Bad Novel. I thought: “How can I disappoint?”
… - AL Kennedy: On fear…
Be without fear. This is impossible, but let the small fears drive your rewriting and set aside the large ones until they behave – then use them, maybe even write them. Too much fear and all you’ll get is silence.
… - Will Self: On not looking back…
Don’t look back until you’ve written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceeding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in… The edit.
… - Haruki Murakami: On building up your ability to concentrate…
In private correspondence the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler once confessed that even if he didn’t write anything, he made sure he sat down at his desk every single day and concentrated. I understand the purpose behind his doing this. This is the way Chandler gave himself the physical stamina a professional writer needs, quietly strengthening his willpower. This sort of daily training was indispensable to him.
… - Geoff Dyer: On the power of multiple projects…
Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it’s a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It’s only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I always have to feel that I’m bunking off from something.
… - Augusten Burroughs: On who to hang out with…
Don’t hang around with people who are negative and who are not supportive of your writing. Make friends with writers so that you have a community. Hopefully, your community of writer friends will be good and they’ll give you good feedback and good criticism on your writing but really the best way to be a writer is to be a writer.
… - Neil Gaiman: On feedback…
When people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
… - Margaret Atwood: On second readers…
You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You’ve been backstage. You’ve seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.
… - Richard Ford: On others’ fame and success…
Try to think of others’ good luck as encouragement to yourself.
… - Helen Dunmore: On when to stop…
Finish the day’s writing when you still want to continue.
… - Hilary Mantel: On getting stuck…
If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don’t just stick there scowling at the problem. But don’t make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people’s words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.
… - Annie Dillard: On things getting out of control…
A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight… it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, ‘Simba!’
… - Cory Doctorow: On writing when the going gets tough…
Write even when the world is chaotic. You don’t need a cigarette, silence, music, a comfortable chair, or inner peace to write. You just need ten minutes and a writing implement.
… - Chinua Achebe: On doing all that you can…
I believe myself that a good writer doesn’t really need to be told anything except to keep at it. Just think of the work you’ve set yourself to do, and do it as well as you can. Once you have really done all you can, then you can show it to people. But I find this is increasingly not the case with the younger people. They do a first draft and want somebody to finish it off for them with good advice. So I just maneuver myself out of this. I say, Keep at it. I grew up recognizing that there was nobody to give me any advice and that you do your best and if it’s not good enough, someday you will come to terms with that.
… - Joyce Carol Oates: On persevering…
I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes… and somehow the activity of writing changes everything. Or appears to do so.
… - Anne Enright: On why none of this advice really matters…
The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.
Via The 99 Percent.
- PD James: On just sitting down and doing it…
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The book list you must read
Even a book list by Neil French is fun to read.
BOOKS (Updated 1/2/08)
In my experience, people in my business frequently enjoy the same books, films, and music. Since I’m often asked about my favourites, here are some books: (Films and music used to be on here, under different buttons on the web-site. Research showed that nobody cared enough for me to bother updating them, and frankly, they don’t vary as much as my book-preferences, so I’ve deleted them)
I read a hell of a lot. I’ve excluded obvious classics, like Dickens, Kipling, Dostoevsky, A.A.Milne, Conrad and so on. These below are more current, and may never even become classics…but I’d hate you to miss them.
Incidentally, I’ve put books I really dislike inred, like that. Don’t want you to think I’d actually recommended them!Bold italics means “do not miss this one”
Underlined Bold Italics means “do not miss this one or your entire life will have been pointless”.BOOKS I’M CURRENTLY READING, or have just read…or which are on the bedside table.
Lost Worlds. Michael Bywater. I’ve read everything I can by this bloke, ever since he was a dyspeptic ranter on the now-defunct ‘Punch’ magazine. He now writes regularly in The Independent. This is, I guess, placeable in the Grumpy Old Men genre, but actually it’s MUCH more important than that. If you’re over forty and English, you have to read it. If you’re over sixty, it’s the story of your life. His latest, ‘Big Babies’ has a horrid cover-design, but is, if anything, even more grumpy. I LOVED it!
Pontoon. Garrison Keillor. I was reminded how much I liked his work when I recognised his as the voice-over on the rightly award-winning Honda series of commercials (in itself an inspired choice). My recommendation, though, is first to buy one of the original audio-books, which feature a selection of his radio talks called ‘The Prairie Home Companion’. If you like those, you’ll adore his books.
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive. Alexander McCall Smith. The adventures of Mrs. Ramotswe, proprietor of the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency in Botswana are addictive. This is the latest. Full of gentle humour and lots of humanity, they are the perfect antidote to ‘civilisation’. Get them all. No sex, no violence, not much tragedy, and a simple joy to read. (Oddly enough, I can’t get along with any of his other efforts. Mrs. Ramotswe rules).
Shakespeare. Bill Bryson. Sheer delight. Everything you ever wanted to know about William S., deftly researched, and written by a very funny man who doesn’t try too hard to be so. Even if you’re not a Bard-fan, you could enjoy this.
The Uncommon Reader. Alan Bennett. The Queen discovers that the traveling library stops at the staff entrance of Buck House. Unwittingly, almost, she begins to read (having avoided it for sixty years). The story starts here and is a joy! The denouement is brilliant. I love Alan Bennett, and play his readings and plays on my iPod and in the car. It might be worth getting the audio-book of this, just for his delivery.
The Generals. Simon Scarrow. See below.
Imperium. Robert Harris. Skullduggery in Ancient Rome. Just a great read, as I now realise have been all his books, starting with the Hannibal the Cannibal series. I think he deserves to be in the favourite writers section actually.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Want to read the whole thing? Go here.
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Baker Tweet
The brief: Help the new café across from Poke put itself on the map.
Poke’s answer: A ‘magical’ box that enabled the staff to announce the arrival of fresh baked goods via Twitter. It was both novel and useful, getting people talking and ensuring that locals knew when to turn up to get the freshest bread.
Moral of the story: Social media is for us and not the other way around. Proved by the crazy bunch at Poke.
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Good filmmaking lessons
- The learning was about interpreting a written concept and transferring it with the right feel onto film media. Filmmaking can either embellish an idea, or make you lose the idea completely.
- I also can’t forget what Piyush Pandey once told me: “You must disappear as a director from this project.” Every artiste has an urge to prove himself, an urge for showmanship. A great performance comes through not as an actor, but when he is the character. I learnt from him that it is vital to let your content do the talking.
- That Nirma Underwater Ballet film project with TapRoot taught me to always try something you think you cannot do. The dancers had to dance and come into the right position under water. It was a virtual nightmare and almost didn’t work.
- Satyajit Ray had this rule of sorts that everyone on the set should return with something that they learnt that day. He told all of us to write down what we learnt each day at the shoot and show it to him.
- Ray always pre-visualised his films. He worked very hard on them and had great respect for the written script and storyboard. He would ‘shot divide’ everything. As a result of this methodical approach, he hardly re-shot sequences. It is rarely the equipment or the technology which makes a film; it is the mind that works behind it.
Shantanu Bagchi on his defining moments and why planning is important.
