I recently read a book titled ‘Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life’s Work’ by Steven Pressfield. It’s the next in the series that started with ‘The War of Art’. Though I would rate it a notch lower than ‘The War of Art’, it is, nevertheless, a wonderful, inspiring book for artists. … Read more
I recently read a book titled ‘The War of Art’ by Steven Pressfield. It argues that the writers’ biggest enemy is Resistance, and advocates ways to identify and deal with it. Here are my notes – part 2 from the book: Now consider the amateur: the aspiring painter, the wannabe playwright. How does he pursue … Read more
In Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” the number 42 is the answer to the “Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” calculated by the supercomputer Deep Thought after 7.5 million years. Unfortunately, the question itself is never revealed. It is a parody on the futility of asking such questions. It is … Read more
I recently read the book ‘War of Art’ by Steven Pressfield. It is an inspiring piece of work for writers and all creatives. It argues that Resistance is the biggest enemy of a writer, and advocates ways to identify and deal with it. Here are a few notes that I took from it: Resistance is … Read more
One of the perks of being a writer is to read a lot. I have noticed that without reading a lot, it is almost impossible to write. Not only does reading provide inspiration for writing (real or like Anu Malik too sometimes, which isn’t all that bad!), but it also keeps your eyes open to … Read more
It is much cheaper to make a movie like Kahaani or A Wednesday or Khosla ka Ghosla than to make a Ra.One or Brahmastra. Even if you add the costs of stars, it might be cheaper to make a Zindagi Na Milega Dobara than Adipurush. But I guess creative people cannot resist the lure of … Read more
In the old days, most creative outputs had gatekeepers. The people who evaluated what you wrote. Or the labels that checked if your music would work. Or the galleries who assessed your paintings. Much of their work was to work for the audience and curate something they thought would sell well and enable them to … Read more
It was exactly five years back that I started writing my first novel – on this day. Since then, I have stuck to writing as one of my primary preoccupations, resulting in publishing many more books. That doesn’t necessarily qualify me for advising anyone on writing. But at the very least, it qualifies me on … Read more
Hundreds of books get published everyday. Maybe thousands. And most of them don’t sell more than ten copies. Some not even that many. Yet, no one who has ever written a book regrets that they wrote one. So what are the reasons to write a book? I came up with a few. Here is the … Read more