Writing Advice from Stephen King

I made a bunch of notes on Writing Advice by Stephen King. I like to refer to this list from time to time. Here I reproduce it for your reference and reading pleasure. Stop watching television. Instead, read as much as possible. Prepare for more failure and criticism than you think you can deal with. … Read more

Irrelevant

It has been a few months since one of my friends successfully summitted Mount Everest and came back down in one piece. When he returned home, it seemed to me that he had not quite registered the enormity of his feat in the eyes of commoners like us. In the number of interactions that I … Read more

2nd Round Editing

After my first draft, my first round of editing is about getting the story right and sharp. In that round, I focus on getting the character, its conflict and the resolution of that conflict correct and smooth. My second (and usually last) round of editing is more technical and focused on finishing. Here is my … Read more

The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss

I read this much-celebrated book ‘The 4-Hour Work Week’ by Timothy Ferriss lately. Perhaps it is intended for a younger audience but for me, a writer close to fifty after twenty five years of corporate life, most of the details in the book were too much work to read. I found only the last section … Read more

Start to Finish

One of the things that I have often wondered is whether it is necessary to finish everything that I start. There is this quintessential image of a writer with heaps of torn paper next to him as he isn’t quite able to finish what he started satisfactorily. I have come around to the thinking that … Read more

The Flipside

I spent most of my first two and a half decades of working life in a corporate job. It is a fairly stable career that assures a reasonably good life. After years on the grind, one might feel there is limited upside, but there is also limited downside. A creative life is different. The upside … Read more

First Lines

50 isn’t very different from 49, I discovered the day after my 50th birthday. Did the above line catch your attention? I just wrote it as an experiment. When I started writing, a lot of courses told me that the first line of a story is very important. So, I cultivated this habit of noting … Read more

Do you know someone to…?

I have been in situations where I have asked the question and then sought the answer. I have never found a satisfactory one. Do you know someone to…. take care of my social media? Someone who will manage my author Instagram account? Someone to run great ads on Amazon and Facebook? Someone who is a … Read more

What Counts

I used to submit stories to magazines a few years back. Most of them had rules for submission. It had to be in a particular format. Word or PDF. It had to be in a particular genre. The title should be in this font and the body should be in the other. Spacing should be … Read more

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