Month: April 2019

What would you read to someone who is dying?

Neera

This is what Annie Dillard had asked Alexander Chee’s class (writer of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel). She wanted this to be the standard for their work.

What a great question to test the quality of your work. The ultimate goal to strive for.

When I think of a dying person I think of my mother. I sat by her side the whole night, alone, holding her hand. We didn’t say much because she was drugged, but if she was awake what would I have read her. What would she like to hear?

She would have like to hear stories from her past. Nostalgic stories. Of good days. Maybe of a bad one too. Because they always ended in something good. I have written some of those stories but they wouldn’t have cut it. They lacked emotion and they lacked hope. Writing for a specific reader help bring more life to your writing.

I would have read her Helen Garner’s, The Spare Room, Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie and John Green’s The Fault in our stars.

I would have read her poetry too. Poems she liked and used to recite to me. Then there were songs. Songs I heard her sing when I was a little girl. There is something in songs and poetry. They touch your heart.

She would have enjoyed Dylan Thomas’s poem “Don’t go gentle into that good night.” She was a fighter after all. She fought till her last breath.


This Pin is from Gregg-Graniteville Library

Walking

Neera

A lot can happen when you go walking. You see the autumn colors in its full glory – crimson, yellow, orange, pastel green splattered in the backdrop of suburbs.

You see amazing sights, sights you have not seen before, just around the corner from your home.

You stop to admire a tree at a distance that has just shed its bark. It looks majestic in the sunlight, its strong and shapely limbs hold the foliage proudly. You say to yourself, my god, what a beautiful tree! Suddenly you feel the urge to go near it, to touch it, to sit in its shade. Just as you walk towards it three kangaroos go past it, hopping in full flight.

You start walking in their direction hoping for a photo opportunity with them. You find them half an hour later, resting at the cozy spot. They hear you coming close, they stand erect, their ear straight, listening to the crunch of your shoes on the gravel. You take a picture and then walk away somewhat scared that if they decide to come to you, you have no chance to outrun them.

You hear the sound of the wind, whispering. Sometimes howling. Birds call you. If you stop long enough they start talking to you. You can’t understand of course, but they are telling you something. But you are certain that with time and practice you can learn their language, just as a seasoned wanderer does when he ventures a foreign land.

You see wild rabbits racing across the ground. You see the sun radiating its glow in all directions. You see treetops, drifting clouds, the shape of the distant hills. You reach the foot of a quarry which you didn’t know exist just a few kilometers from your home.

You notice the path you have been walking so far was the horse track.

A story starts taking shape in your head. You pull out the notebook you brought with you and start scribbling. You capture the thoughts before they vanish. Words come faster than you could write them. You have never been this clear and eloquent at your desk.

You find a rock to sit and write. No, you don’t write. You receive. You receive what the creator himself is giving you, in the middle of its own creation, nature. That’s why he summoned you here.

You sit there until there is no more to receive. You feel complete. Your soul is content. Sun has gone down. Birds are returning to their nests. Ants are coming back too. You get up and start walking back to your home. A little differently though. As if you not walking on the ground but just a little above it.

You are happy. Really happy.

You don’t have to worry what to write about…

Neera

Recently, Austin Kleon, author of How to Steal Like an Artist and Keep Going, said in the interview with Madeleine Dore (Extraordinary Routines), “I think routine is so important, especially when you’re getting started creatively, but for me right now, I almost need checkboxes and rituals more than I need routine.”

Currently, his daily checkboxes include:

  • writing in his diary,
  • publishing a blog post,
  • taking a walk, and
  • reading a book.

Austin goes on to say, “I always keep a pocket notebook on me, I diary in the morning, and then create a blog post. Those blog posts will become talks, which then become books. You don’t have to worry what to write about, you just write every day and things begin to develop.”

What a great advice! No brainer! Yes. Do the actions (write, blog, walk, read) and you will become the noun (writer).

I added one more checkbox to it and adopted it as my daily ritual.

Lie to me!

Neera

There is so much to like about the Sydney Writers Festival this year. First of all this year’s theme – “Lie to me”.

This is what the artistic director Michaela McGuire has to say about the theme:

“In the second season of the greatest television show ever made, Buffy the Vampire Slayer learns a hard lesson about who she can really trust. At the end of the episode, as she’s standing bereft and betrayed over a friend’s fresh grave, her most trusted confidant asks Buffy how he can possibly reassure her. She responds simply: “Lie to me”.

How powerful!

“These three words,” says Michaela, “convey so much. They’re an admission of helplessness and complicity; a plea; a dare; a request for a bedtime story in a world full of monsters.”

In four days, hundreds of the world’s most exciting writers will gather in Sydney to examine the white lies and deceptions that are necessary for survival, and malicious lies that are spun with a darker intent. They’ll explore the ways that writing can be used to deceive others in an increasingly post-truth world, look at the lies that we tell ourselves and each other, and those we collectively tell as a country. 

There is an impressive line-up of writers – Markus Zusak of The Book Thief, Leigh Sales of Any Ordinary Day, Graeme Simsion of The Rosie Project (and now of The Rosie Result) and George Saunders the author of nine books, including the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Man Booker Prize.

I am particularly interested in Fatima Bhutto (niece of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto), who is doing the closing address and Alexander Chee of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel.

The festival is on from Monday, 29 April till Sunday, 5 May a must-go event on any aspiring writer’s calendar.