10 Pieces of Advice For Serious Writers

by Mohit Parikh

For the serious writers of this generation or that, a few pieces of must-follow advice.

10) Don’t take baths: Bathing corrupts

Imagine yourself stepping out of a nice hot shower, all fresh and optimistic, sitting down to work on this superangry, superprofound novel that you have been stuck on for quite some time. Well, the next thing you know — your hapless writer in the abject city has found a love interest, has won the Commonwealth Short Story Competition, has signed a three books contract with a literary agent, and life isn’t that bad after all.

No can do!

Serious writing comes from intense pain and suffering. Bathing is pure joy. Leave it for the happy and shiny.

9) Starve: A Serious Mind Resides in a Starving Body

Remember Kafka’s hunger artists? If your dedication to your art is no less spiritual than theirs, if you consider yourself a serious writer of the highest order, you will know better than to eat to your stomach’s fill.

Fact is, a full stomach distracts a dedicated brain. You will want to reply to the unattended whatsapp pings, make phone calls, check your mail for the nth time, like a Facebook post of a fellow writer, read the latest story on the New Yorkeror find something inspirational on Brainpickings. You will want to take creative naps, drink tea in Japanese cups, and go for a walk because you feel too heavy. Bah! You see where it takes you? To mediocrity. Ask Raskolnikov if you doubt me.

Starving is the tapasya necessary to keep your integrity intact as you turn dream into a manuscript.

8) Read Less

You have already read it all; and that’s why you are writing, because the book you always wanted to read hasn’t been written yet. Read less because it will make you want to finish your book so that you may finally be able to read something really awesome. (You are being objective, of course.)

Read less and you won’t be infected by the substandard work that is around.

7) Write Less

Write more and you are crass. You are base. You are like millions of other writers who consult the clock more than the compass, who care more for word-count than wonderment. Write less. Wait for inspiration. You are not in the business of writing and you don’t manufacture books. You are writing as if this is the only thing you will be able to do before you die.

Own it.

6) For Inspiration, Be Angry

Curse the world, blame the rich, plot against the powerful. Envy the successful. Judge your neighbours, shout at your parents, shoo away the happy kids. Then, punch the door, kick the wall and shut up and sit down to write.
Nobody understands! But you will make them see. Through your book.

5) Take Forever

Yann Martel once said that the world does need your book. You know that; you have asked around. But what you are giving words to on your desk is not just another book, it is the book. The book the world does not deserve yet, but the book it definitely needs.

Take your time preparing this panacea.

4) Stand by Your Ideals

Idealists maybe young, hot and misguided but pragmatists are comfort seeking complacent, tired old selfish people. Stand, thus, for your ideals, values and principles. How can it hurt? After all, you did not come to literature for money or fame.

Or did you, you poor chap?

3) Write (Only) What You Know

With all due respect, dear Serious Writer, you are just a human being, and so what you do not know is so enormous, so unimaginably humongous, that it would confuse you no end what not to include.

Stick to what you know. When you don’t digress you are deep.

2) Get a Job, You Idiot

You are broke and your book is nowhere near completion. Your parents are still feeding you: your mom hands you a monthly pocket money, your dad intermittently for your bike’s petrol. No, do not break the fixed deposit your parents have saved for your marriage (which you do not see ever happening) or, since you are prone to flimsy sub-plots, please don’t fake your death for insurance money.

Just get a job.

A lousy, low paying, self-esteem hurting job. See how it fuels not only your bike but your anger; thereby, your writing.

1) Get a Life, Occasionally

Words have the folly of making us look smart, wise and knowledgeable, thus spoke Don Juan Matus. And true it is. In that little room of yours, as you played endlessly with words for six hours a day, every day for two-three years, that junior from high school who used to look up to you has married, enjoyed an overseas honeymoon and is father of the cutest daughter; the girl-next-door you had a fling with has moved on, has taken a year off from work, is travelling around India with her girlfriends; the sparrows in your lawn have made nests, made love, laid eggs for two springs now; and the seeds your father sowed in the garden have ripened into trees of meetha neem as high as you.

Books happen, don’t happen; get published, don’t get published; get read, don’t get read. Everything dies, including books.

Be serious, but not too serious, not always.

Life is now. Don’t miss it in your self-importance.

Mohit Parikh’s work is published and upcoming in various Indian and American literary magazines. He has finished a novel, Manan,where all the child characters, except one, grow up.