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.

Do Something…

Neera

I am a self-help books junkie. I have been reading self-help books even before they became mainstream. Which make me a kind of authority on them.

I not only read them but dutifully adopt the idea that speaks to me. That should make me one hell of a self-helped-super-achiever.

But that is not the case.

I am ‘as usual’, ‘forever’, a work in progress.

The moment I adopt a good habit, after painstakingly repeating it day in and day out, I get out of it in a jiffy.

Last year, I have been very regular with the gym. All through the winter months, I was going to the gym six days a week. Then I went away for a week during the Christmas and New Year break and haven’t gone back to the gym since then.

Why is that it is so difficult to build a good habit and so easy to get out of it.

Nine months was a long time to solidify a habit. Don’t they say it only takes 21 days to build a habit? Then how come mine came crashing down within one week. I can pick up my gym bag and go to the gym any day. But I don’t.

I have all kinds of excuses.

It is too hot. Who goes to the gym when the daily temperature is forty-one degrees? I will start once I come back from my next trip. A few missed weeks won’t hurt.

This is where everyone’s problem lies. We can sit there and cook up excuses rather than get up and just do it.

Even though we are fully aware that once started we will not only accomplish the task but also feel good about it. The simple act of ‘doing’ will take us out of misery.

And it is not just about the gym. It applies to everything else we want to do but do not do it. What is it that stops us from taking action when every rational thought in us tells us to do it?

The answer came to me from the latest self-help book, ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F*ck’ by Mark Mason.

Mark writes,

“Most of us commit to action only if we feel a certain level of motivation. And we feel motivation only when we feel enough emotional inspiration. We assume that these steps occur in a sort of chain reaction, like this:

Emotional inspiration → Motivation → Desirable action

If you want to accomplish something but don’t feel motivated or inspired, then you assume you’re just screwed. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s not until a major emotional life event occurs that you can generate enough motivation to actually get off the couch and do something.

The thing about motivation is that it’s not only a three-part chain but an endless loop:

Inspiration → Motivation → Action → Inspiration → Motivation → Action → Etc.”

Your actions create further emotional reactions and inspirations and move on to motivate your future actions. Taking advantage of this knowledge, we can actually reorient our mindset in the following way:

Action → Inspiration → Motivation

If you lack the motivation to make an important change in your life, do something — anything, really — and then harness the reaction to that action as a way to begin motivating yourself.”

Mark calls it the “do something” principle.

The author Tim Ferris relates a story he once heard about a novelist who had written over 70 novels. Someone asked the novelist how he was able to write so consistently and remain inspired and motivated. He replied, “Two hundred crappy words per day, that’s it.” The idea was that if he forced himself to write two hundred crappy words, more often than not the act of writing would inspire him; and before he knew it, he’d have thousands of words down on the page.

Two hundred steps were all I needed to start a lunchtime walk. Tomorrow it will be 200 steps on the treadmill and I will be back to the routine. I don’t feel like a failure anymore.

If we follow the “do something” principle, failure feels unimportant. When the standard of success becomes merely acting — when any result is regarded as progress and important, when inspiration is seen as a reward rather than a prerequisite — we propel ourselves ahead. We feel free to fail, and that failure moves us forward.

Dance…

Neera

“Dance….and for years later you’re dancing around your kitchen with a pint of milk in your hand. The windows are open wide, the neighbours are still awake, and they are watching you fall in love with being alive.” – Morsus Engel