Category: Writing

The Art of Noticing

Neera

I was in the public library, where, near the entrance, where they put new books on display, was Helen Garner’s face on a book cover, looking at me intently. She seemed to be wondering whether I was worthy enough to read her superbly written prose.

I picked up the book. It was titled “Yellow Notebook Diaries Volume I 1978–1987.” I was in my early twenties during those years, still trying to figure out who I was and Helen had already written her first novel, “Monkey Grip.”

I opened it and read the first line…

“Maybe it’d be a good idea to start another diary, just to cream it off. I bought this yellow book today.” 

— Helen Garner

It would be a good idea for me too, to start another diary too, where I can practice writing like Helen Garner. Where I can learn to notice little things, insights and idiosyncrasies of being human. It will be good if I could write a page a day. Maybe that’s too much of an ask. I know I will not be able to keep up the promise. I will take that pressure off right now. I will write whenever I can.

A writer’s job is to record what is happening around her. I need to pay attention to my things around me. 

Pay Attention to What You Care About.

Rob Walker, writer of the wonderful book “The Art of Noticing,” wrote in his newsletter:.

Pay attention to what you care about; care about what you pay attention to.

There is a connection between noticing and attention and caring and observations. 

We often end up “noticing” or paying attention to things we really care about.

Austin Kleon wrote about Amy Meissner is a textile artist, who used to run the mending and clothes repair workshops. All her workshops had the same caption: “Mend a thing.”

Because she believes, once you’ve mended something, if you didn’t have sentimental value attached to it before, then you certainly do once you’ve taken the time to care for it.

That might me the reason why I am so attached to the tapestries I have made. I can still remember what I was thinking when I embroidered a particular part of the tapestry. As if my thoughts got woven with the threads and became a part of the tapestry.

Rob Walker, talked about a student who made a planter for the cactus he cared for. He’d done that, on the theory that “by nurturing or caring for something, you pay more attention to it.” 

Rob drew a diagram of care/notice cycle.

Image by the author

He says it is helpful to ask yourself:

  • Is this thing I am paying attention to, do I actually care about?
  • This (other) things I do really care about, am I giving it the attention I should?
  • Am I noticing what I want to notice?

A Lone Shoe

One of Rob’s readers wrote:

For decades I’ve walked and hiked trails and sidewalks and driven country roads. Sometime… more often than seems plausible I come across a shoe. One shoe. Never a pair of shoe. I make up a story about how each one must have ended up this way or about the person who has the other shoe. I don’t remember all the shoes or all the stories. But I always remember to take time to ponder. — Phyllis

Practicing the Art of Noticing.

I am so surprised how all these stories are blending with Helen Garner’s way writing which is based on noticing.

Helen writes in her diary:

A man in metro, a 1950s relic but real, not an affectation — untidy, perfectly period clothes — lumber jacket, tight trousers, big worn, non-descript shoes. He was playing and exuisite basic rock-and-roll guitar and singing ‘Corinna’ through a little amp that looked like a white Daisy Duck radio.”

While driving to the veggie market I decide to notice something. Just to test my noticing skills. But what? I settled upon noticing shades of green. 

A few days’ rain has turned every bit of vegetation into different shades of green. I noticed a tree with fresh big leaves. It’s a light green. The leafy kind of light green with a tinge of yellow at the edges. The grass on the ground has different shades too — deeper green, pastel green and eucalyptus green. The green on the shrubs has more red tone even orange at places. That is strange, I had never noticed before that each green has a tinge of some other colour at the edges. Sometimes yellow, sometimes red, sometimes purple.

I came home, rather pleased with myself. While putting the vegies away I heard a fly trapped somewhere in the kitchen. I couldn’t see it. I tuned myself to the sound, deciding to continue practicing the Art of Noticing.

Her buzzing is getting more desperate with time. Seems like it is trapped in the overhead exhaust fan above the stove. I open one screen of the canopy to let it out. I can’t even see it. That’s all I can do. It will have to find its own way out. No one can help you when you are trapped, more than opening the door. You have to find your own way out. I go to the bedroom to chane, by the time I come back the buzzing had stopped. I put the screen back. I might have saved a life today.

Conclusion

It wasn’t hard to notice things once you consciously make an effort.

Rob Walker’s book, The Art of Noticing — 131 Way To Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration and Discover Joy in the Every Day, could give you a good start.

Photo by Bookblock on Unsplash

Filing is a Critical Skill That Most Writers Ignore

Neera 1 Comment

A little while ago, I wrote an article, 3 Habits Of A Freshman Writer, where I touched on the importance of having a proper system to file your work and research.

No writing book or article I ever read mentioned organizing your writing and notes, yet it is one of the most important habits for new writers.

I have spent months trying to find quotes/ notes/ stories that I scribbled somewhere and didn’t file them properly. Not only it a wasted time, but my writing is poorer for the lack of all that reference material that could have made it more impactful.

This week, Austin Kleon touched on Indexing, filing systems, and the art of finding what you have in his blog. He, too, has no system to file his work.

“I have no index for the notebooks (unless you count my logbook), and no way, really, of knowing what’s in them, a condition worsened by my terrible memory, and the fact that one of the reasons I like keeping a diary, as Henry Jones, Sr., said, is because I don’t have to remember what’s in it. I plan on starting an index in the coming weeks and updating it for each new notebook.” — Austin Kleon.

He wrote this more than ten years ago and didn’t follow through. Today when he is working on his fourth book, he is kicking himself for not doing what he knew he should do but didn’t.

Your system should consist of three things.

  • Ease and robustness. If the system is tedious or time-consuming, you will not do it. Now and then, you will slack, and things will fall out. You will need a system for both digital and paper-based documents. It should apply to everything. Even the writing that seems trivial at the moment will sound beautiful when read months or years later.
  • Retrievability. The system needs to be supported by a powerful search engine so that when you need anything, you know where to look for it and how to retrieve it with minimum effort.
  • Portability. This is to capture any idea you get at any time of the day. It should travel with you everywhere, even in the bathroom (especially in the bathroom to capture the ideas you will get in the shower).

“A good idea is not of any use if you can’t find it.”
 — Logan Heftel

Some Unusual System to Organize Your Work

I am fascinated by the filing systems of other writers, and Austin Kleon’s article prompted me to share my system with you.

Although not foolproof, some of the ways I am using to organize my work are working well.

Highlighter

Julia Carmen, the writer of The Artist’s Way, suggested a handy and method to picking up the grain from the chaff.

Those of you who haven’t heard of Julia Carmen, she is the one who suggested that the writers should start their day with writing Morning Pages.

Morning Pages are three pages (approximately 750 words) stream of consciousness, writing about anything and everything that crosses your mind. Usually, morning pages are gibberish, things meant for your eyes only, but now and then, they will have some nuggets that you want to save.

The best way is to do that, according to Julia Carmen, is to pick a highlighter and color the bits you want to save. You can then type them up in Evernote or whatever notes software you are using. Keep each idea/story separate and give them an appropriate heading.

Now when you need it, all you need to do is a simple keyword search.

Email

Email is an unglorified and somewhat underused way of storing your work.

I usually email myself whatever research I did on the project I am working on. I keep it in a separate folder. Most email software has a pretty powerful keyword search, and since my email is always open, my research is literally at my fingertips.

Blogs

My blog has become my repository. I can retrieve any story or a quote that I have used in an article and published on my blog. All I need is a keyword.

File Explorer

I have thousands of articles, research snippets, and pdf that reside on my computer under appropriate files. Although criticized mercilessly, File Explorer is the oldest filing system in the digital world and is quite intuitive. It has a decent search facility, and I have usually been able to find the document as long as I have given it a good title.

Evernote

I am relatively new to Evernote and use only the free version. Yet, I am suitably impressed with it. The search is swift, and it can even recognize text in images as well. So if I take an image of a page from a book and save it in Evernote, it will read it as if it is reading a text document.

Index for Medium Articles

Recently I started indexing my Medium articles. I created a Main Index that lists all the categories I write under. Each category is a separate post and lists the article I have written so far. I update them twice a month. It is working like magic. Now I can access any of my articles with a couple of clicks.

Your Takeaway

It’s very easy to write every day and collect a lot of material through research, but it’s not easy to keep track of it all.

You have to develop a system so that you can access whatever you need with minimum effort.

You either create your own system or follow someone else that works for you.

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Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash

Why I Want To Write Fiction In 2021

Neera

Not so long ago, I was reading an article on Barbara Cartland. It was a feature article going through the life story of the novelist who had written more than 700 romance novels during seven decades, making her undisputed queen of a genre.

I still remember a photo the article included. Dressed in a pink gown on a pink bed, ninety-two years old was dictating her next novel to her assistant.

I went, “Wow! This is what I want to do in my old age. Write stories.”

The average life expectancy in Australia is 83 years. By the time I am going to reach my eighties, it will be 93 years. We all need to plan how we will occupy ourselves for three decades after we retire from paid workforce.

You can only do a limited number of things in your eighties — you can watch TV, walk your poodle, do crossword puzzles, read books. Or you can tell stories.

I am choosing to tell stories. 

Now, you can tell stories from your life (which most old people do and they are dead right boring), or you can fictionalize them (which gets the message across in an interesting way).

Fiction is more effective than non-fiction. Here is why.

Non-fiction is straightforward. 

It helps the reader solve a problem, accomplish a task, or help them learn something new. Its message is clear, concise, and direct. It also has a short shelf life.

Fiction, on the other hand, is eternal. Fairy tales are centuries old. I bet you still remember the fairy tales you heard when you were a child. Religions use stories too. Parables do what scriptures can’t.

Humans have unsatiable hunger for stories. Even as adults, we crave stories as much as we did when we were children.

“Nonfiction reveals the lies, but only metaphor can reveal the truth.” — Ms Forna

Non-fiction appeals to our logic, but fiction touches our hearts.

Stories are how we communicate. 

Ever since language has been invented, we have been weaving our hopes, messages, reflections, and insights into stories.

When we read stories, we get to know the characters’ inner lives, which makes us reflect on our own lives. We get drawn into their world. Their troubles become ours. We share their laughter and their tears and walk with them as they muddle along in their journeys.

That is the magic of stories. They help us improve our ability to identify and understand other people’s emotions. They equip us to negotiate complex social relationships in the real world with greater skill.

“Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being…I just think that fiction that isn’t exploring what it means to be human today isn’t good art.” — David Foster Wallace

Fiction helps us connect to our humanity.

Research shows that reading fiction makes us more empathetic. Psychologists at the New School for Social Research, New York, say that reading literary fiction makes us better people.

Fiction is essential to the survival of the human race because it helps us to slip into “the other’s” skin. It builds tolerance because it gives us an opportunity to see the world from different perspectives. It is a shining beacon of hope in an increasingly intolerant world.

Fiction also has the power to instill a sense of wonder in us. Stories can take us to magical places. They jolt us awake when we slip into the rut of the mundane. They liberate us by giving free rein to our imagination. This is not to discount fiction as an escape hatch from reality. — Vineetha Mokkil 

A good story gives us a better understanding of ourselves, others, and our society by drawing us into the world created by the writer.

I don’t think there is a better way for a writer to serve humanity than to write fiction.

I have started publishing short stories.

Writing fiction is much harder than writing non-fiction for the obvious reason. You need to imagine a lot — the characters, the plot, the structure, the dialogue, the emotions. But that makes fiction more attractive to me. I love the challenge of it. The ability to create a story that feels true. As if the characters are real people and live next door to you. 

I also think fiction writing is the ultimate form of storytelling. Even though (according to Georges Polti) there are only 36 plots, every story even with the same plot is different and original in its own right. 

Although the ultimate goal for every fiction writer is to write a full-length novel, short stories are an excellent point to start. I have started writing and publishing short stories so that by the time I reach my eighties I have learned the craft.

I have already published two — The Flight, and Aunt Olivia. Have a read and let me know what you think.

I intend to post one every week.

Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash

Understanding Authorpreneurship

Neera 1 Comment

How can one study Botany?

There are millions of plants on our planet. How can one study them? It will take us several lifetimes to understand the differences between species.

Yet Botanists know most of these differences by heart. They have arranged the information so that it is easy to know where everything fits in the big picture. 

Botanists divided all plants into two major groups — non-vascular and vascular. The non-vascular group contains early plants with no vascular system, while the vascular plants have a well-developed vascular system. 

Then they further subdivided the groups. Non-vascular plants have two divisions— Bryophyta(Mosses), Marchantiophyta(Liverworts) and, vascular plants have four divisions — Pteridophyta (Ferns), Coniferophyta (Conifers), Ginkgophyta (Gingko), and Magnoliophyta (Flowering plants).

There you go—the entire plant kingdom can be explained in two paragraphs. Each division has further sub-divisions, classes, order, families, and genus, but all you need is a bird’s-eye view approach to understand Botany.

I am going to use the same approach to understand authorpreneurship. 

Throughout my journey as a writer, I approached everything with the vigor of a student. I wanted to write my memoir, but I didn’t know how to turn my boring anecdotes into stories. I learned it.

I wanted to write a novel but I didn’t know how to develop my idea into an outline. I learned it too.

I didn’t know how to start a blog, write articles, write for social media, sketch. But I learned them.

I learned it mostly from other people. People took the time and shared their knowledge and techniques through books, blogs, videos, and podcasts. 

Now, I am learning authorpreneurship. Although it is not science or skill, it is complex enough to demand full attention.

It is complex because it is new. 

There is no clear path, and there is no one path.

Yet, it is reproducible as several writers are successfully doing it. 

I am reading stories after stories of writers who are turning their writing into a thriving business. I intend to study them and learn from them.

The first person who intrigued me was Jesse Tevelow.

At the not-so-ripe age of 31, Jesse was fired from a start-up company. He had no plans for his future. Instead of looking for another job, Jesse followed his dream. He hunkered down in his one-bedroom apartment and started writing.

He had two #1 bestsellers on Amazon in less than eighteen months, and he was earning thousands of dollars per month in passive income.

Writing can be a viable side-gig, a powerful leveraging tool, and even a lucrative full-time pursuit. It can open doors you never knew existed. But perhaps more importantly, it can bring you more fulfillment than you’ve ever felt before. That’s exactly what it did for me. — Jesse Tevelow.

According to a New York Times article, four out of every five Americans feel the urge to write a book, yet very few of them actually write one. 

Why?

Because writing a book has historically been considered an arduous task. It is like climbing Everest. First, you have to write a greater story. Then you have to hire an agent. Then you have to score a publishing deal. And even if you somehow pull that off, it’ll take years before your book hits the shelves. Writing a book is not everyone’s game.

It was true about two decades ago. Everything has changed since. 

Jesse wrote his first book in six months, making countless mistakes along the way. He didn’t have a publisher or an editor, or a marketing team, yet he still published a #1 bestseller that generates a significant passive income. 

“The experience blew my mind, to put it lightly.” writes Jesse. “I couldn’t help but wonder, are other people seeing the same results?”

As he dug deeper, he found multiple examples of indie authors making five, six, and sometimes even seven figures from their self-published books and related companies. And then it hit him. 

We now live in a world that favors content creators over gatekeepers. — Jesse Tevelow.

Jesse now has a multi-million dollar business build around his books. He is the founder of LaunchTeam, a distributed network of go-to-market experts who help remarkable people launch remarkable things.

I bought all three of Jesse’s books — The Connection Algorithm, Authorpreneur: Build the Brand, Business, Lifestyle You Deserve It’s Time To Write Your Book, Hustle: The Life-Changing Magic of Constant Motion. It was the best $4.50 I ever spent. 

Here is what I learned from his books:

If you’re entrepreneurial and hard-working, you can use books to earn meaningful passive income, gain leverage as an expert in your field, build your legacy, grow a sustainable business, and enrich the world.

And you don’t need anyone’s permission.

You can do it. 

It might sound hyperbolic and crazy, but it’s true.

Now is the most favorable environment for writing books the world has ever seen.

There are two things to keep in mind:

  1. Technology and entrepreneurship have made books more powerful than ever before.

2. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are several successful models available to follow.

Applying the bird’s-eye view approach to classify the models, I have found there are two major categories.

  1. Book Brand: This is where authors rely on producing multiple books in a popular genre targeting the same audience, using paid ads to drive traffic directly to the book sales page. It is usually part of the high production business model. Several fiction writers such as James Patterson, Joanna Penn come in this category. 
  2. Author Brand: This is about branding the author, and attracting the target market over time through content marketing, speaking, social media, and paid advertising. Authors find a niche and build an empire in that niche. Examples include Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, The Universe Has Your Back by Gabrielle Berstein, or Rise of the Youpreneur by Chris Ducker. This design style also applies to biographies like Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

In my further articles, I will further explore these models.

Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

Authorpreneur  - A New Publication For Writers

Neera

The dictionary defines ‘author’ as a person who has written something, especially a book, and ‘entrepreneur’ as a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit.

Many years ago, I combined the two to develop the word ‘authorpreneur’ to describe someone who takes risks to turn their writing into a business. 

I didn’t give it much thought because I was new to writing and still finding my feet. But soon, I started spotting the word being used by other writers. I even noticed some books with the word ‘authorpreneur’ appearing in the title. That was it.

The time had come to make the term mainstream.

Let me define and elaborate on the term.

An authorpreneur is a person who creates written products, participates in creating her brand, and actively promotes that brand through a variety of outlets.

An Authorpreneur makes use of the twenty-first-century outlets such as websites, blogs, social media, content marketing, writing platforms, newsletters, promotional materials both in print and online, speaking engagements, online and in-person courses, and workshops to create a unique business model to build a community based thriving business.

I started reading about more and more writers who were using these new outlets and becoming considerably successful. Much more successful than it was possible in the traditional way of writing and publishing. 

In less than ten years, a new breed of writers has started dominating the writing industry, and the trend is going not only to continue but explode. 

Yet thousands of writers aspiring are not even aware of it.

Why I started this publication?

One of the myths around writing is that you can’t live off your writing. Indeed, the vast majority of authors do not make a living from their written words. 

The traditional publishing industry that once sustained many writers is now in a freefall accelerated by the pandemic. I have been watching in dismay as publisher after publisher closing their shop. 

Four in five traditionally published books never “earn back” the advances received by their authors, which means they don’t sell enough copies to make the writers any money past the initial amount paid by publishers for writing the books. Most e-books don’t sell more than 560 copies per year and most print books don’t sell more than 250 copies per year. In fact, the average books sell 3,000 copies in its lifetime. — Nina Amir

But that is changing. On the other hand, self-publishing is thriving.

Making a living as an author takes hard work, and the income from just one book or writing on one platform will not pay you enough to live on. If you want to earn a living as an author and not make a living but thrive as an author, you need to think like a business person. Like an authorpreneur.

This publication will help you achieve that.

Writing is the hardest profession to break into. 

Not only learning to write well is arduous but making a living from writing is grueling. But things are changing for good.

Today many more avenues are available to writers to publish and make money while honing their craft. New ones are fast appearing. But the learning curve is sharp.

I have created this publication to help new writers establish their writing business. It will have articles specifically for that purpose.

If you are a writer like me, if you want to do nothing else but write, you want to know the clear pathway to become an authorpreneur. 

I want to dedicate this publication exclusively to help writers become authorpreneurs.

What kind of articles I will be published here

Articles helping you develop an authorpreneur mindset. Articles with practical advice to set up your business. Stories of the writers who have been on the journey before you and have made it. Summaries of the books on the topic.

I want to create a community of writers who want to help each other establish their author business. 

If we all lift each other up in small ways, we can reach new, exciting heights together.

Initially, I will be the sole contributor to this publication. With time I will like other writers to join me to help build this publication. 

I will be looking for high-quality, practical articles that focus on mindset, creativity, writing, editing, publishing, marketing, and author business models. 

Here is my rough list of the kind of articles I am envisioning:

  • The mindset of an authorpreneur.
  • The business of writing.
  • The process and habits of writers.
  • Advice on developing writing products.
  • Articles exploring different writing career paths.
  • Unique or creative writing, editing, and publishing tips, tools, and methods. 
  • Book summaries of books on the top of authorpreneurship.
  • First-person accounts of getting a book published.
  • Interviews with experienced writers.
  • Other creative pieces in which fellow writers can learn something new.

Who can contribute?

Any one of you who wants to write on the topic.

If you want to contribute, reach to me via  LinkedIn.

How can you help?

By subscribing to the publication. 

By leaving comments and asking questions about what you would like me to write about.

I am not starting this publication to turn it into a mega publication but as a small portal to share my learning as I progress on the authorpreneur journey.

“True authors don’t write for fame or make a name or money, they write to make impact.” — Bernard Kelvin Clive.

They say a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. For me, that step is this publication and my newsletter A Whimsical Writer.

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Want to take your writing to another level? Subscribe to my newsletter, A Whimsical Writer.

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Photo by Ryan Snaadt on Unsplash

A Five Minute Exercise I Do Before Writing Articles

Neera

You have cleared your desk, you have finished all your chores, you have turned your mobile phone on silent, and you have disconnected from the internet.

For the next hour, you are now going to write the article you have been planning to write all day.

You open the document and POOF!

Your mind has gone blank.

The articles that you drafted a few days earlier, you try to take them further, but nothing comes to mind.

It is as if your mind doesn’t want to focus on the writing at hand. It wants to do everything else but write.

Writing is elusive. Some days you are so good and other days you can’t seem to get even a few words out doesn’t matter how hard you try.

At times like these, you do the biggest time-wasting activity.

You open the browser and start looking for ideas.

You need something to get you started. A little clue. A little hint. A tiny idea will be enough. You promise yourself that you will read for just a few minutes, and then stop.

But it never happens that way.

You start reading one article, then another, and before you know it, the hour that you had dedicated to writing had flown past, and you haven’t written a single word.

It happens to me every time.

This is what Steven Pressfield Called “Resistance.”

Before reading Steven Pressfield’s classic book The War of Art, I thought the fault was just with me. I was the only one with a restless mind that can’t concentrate on the task at hand and want to do everything but what it should be doing.

I learned pretty soon, that there are certain activities that elicit resistance and writing is one of them.

“Resistance” is a repelling force, that is generated from inside and it doesn’t discriminate. Even the experienced writers, artists, athletes, poets, singers, and spiritual masters constantly battle with it. It is an “evil force” that is there to prevent anyone who wants to do any good with their lives.

Resistance will do anything to achieve its goal — which is to stop you from achieving yours.

It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole. Resistance is protean. It will assume any form, if that is what it takes to deceive you. — Steven Pressfield.

The more important is your goal, the more resistance you will feel.

I tried everything to beat ‘Resistance.’

  1. I freed myself of all the distractions. I even disconnected Wi-Fi so that I don’t fall into the trap of getting ideas from the internet. Soon I discovered the distractions are not just external, they could be internal too.
  2. I set a time and place to write. It worked for a few days and then the same thing happened. The boredom of routine set in and my mind would want to do something exciting rather than write the article.
  3. I started stopping in mid-sentence as Stephen King suggests, so that I could pick up it the next day and finish the article. But my mind couldn’t pick up the threads and finish the tapestry. It wanted to check the fridge and see what treat it can have.
  4. I outlined so that I knew where the article was going. But on those fateful days, I couldn’t write even a few paragraphs to fill each point. No stories will come to mind — personal or general. Quotes that are usually on the tip of my tongue would elude me. I couldn’t come up with convincing arguments about the points I was making.
  5. I started doing meditation before writing. Rather than having a calming effect, it started giving me panic attacks. I would feel that I was wasting the only free time I have for writing.

There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. — Steven Pressfield

But in my case, I was sitting down to write and doing everything I knew to write, and still, wasn’t able to write.

I felt like an imposter.

All of the previous writing meant nothing if I couldn’t write every day. A writer should be able to write on demand.

If at this stage someone had given me a contract for a book I would have declined.

Who was I kidding?

I would never be able to write professionally.

I will never become a prolific writer.

The Imposter in me was working overtime. He is waiting for me to call it quits and go back to shopping online. It doesn’t even want to know that I need to earn money before I go spending.

You will know what I mean if you have watched the movie ‘The Word.’

In the movie, Rory Jansen (played by Bradly Cooper), a struggling writer, finds a handwritten manuscript in an old briefcase he bought from an antique shop. The manuscript is so well written that Rory starts typing it on his computer, word for word.

He wants to feel the words pass through his fingers.

He wants to know how does it feel to type well-written words.

Rory Jansen submits that manuscript to an agent. His novel gets published and becomes a huge success.https://neeramahajan.com/media/f8961eac5f4192795c18743f78014e33

Don’t worry I am not taking on the path of plagiarism. 

Even before watching that movie, I figured out if I pick up a book, a good book, and start typing a few paragraphs from it, I get in the rhythm of typing, which somehow awakens the narrator in me.

The words would start flowing effortlessly.

It was my little secret, and I was so ashamed of it.

I didn’t want to tell anyone what I was doing.

But imagine my surprise when my writing teacher, a well-known editor with three decades of experience in the industry, prescribed the same exercise in a recent novel-writing workshop.

There is a science behind it.

When you are typing looking at a text, it focuses your mind on just one activity. You are not thinking about what to cook for dinner and whether to take out clothes from the line because it might start raining soon.

When you are reading the text line by line, something in the text triggers a thought or brings out memory, and before you know it, your own story appears before you.

This is when you should stop copying and start typing the story you just got reminded of.

Our brain wanders off at the slightest of provocation. You are putting this “wandering” ability to use.

Let’s do a little experiment.

Read the following paragraph. It is from a book called The Memory Code, which I opened randomly and started typing.

A mother of a five-year-old told me this story: Her son had been wanting to learn to ride his bike without his training wheels, but whenever she took them off, he would give up after a couple of minutes. She finally asked him, “What do you think will happen if you fall off the bike?” He immediately answered (while wearing his helmet), “I’ll die.”

Does it remind you of your own bike riding story?

Or any of your unfounded fears. There it is. Start writing your story.

It reminded me of my three heart-felt-wishes when I was in primary school.

For years I wanted nothing more but those three things, and one of them was learning to ride a bike. All my friends knew how to ride a bike. We were soon going to high school, and they were all getting new bikes, except me.

Memories that followed have given me material for a full-fledged article that I will write — Three Wishes Of A Thirteen-Years Old (One that will never come true.)

Summary

There you go. You have one of my deepest secrets that I was so ashamed to share.

It is, in fact, a writing exercise suggested by writing teachers.

Give it a go and see whether it works for you too.

Photo by Radu Florin on Unsplash