Project READ: Take Two

Back on the burner with a fresh lease of life. Almost finished reading Jeet Thayil's Narcopolis. This is my first book about an opium junkie and I have no idea what to make of this novel. Anyway, a review is due so that's coming up soon. I need to swallow to recall that this book won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2013 and I wonder what the other books on the shortlist were like.When Thayil said in an interview that this novel was the opposite of catharsis, he certainly meant it. He said: "Catharsis gets stuff out of you. But this put bad feelings into me." It sure put bad feelings into me too. 

Project READ

Surfacing after an eon and hoping that the incubation period has enhanced my creativity. Suddenly I find myself overwhelmed by the need to make my reading orderly. I have been struggling for some time now to create a proper reading list instead of randomly reading whatever piques my interest. With the eventual goal of pursuing a doctorate, my aim is first of all to find out what I am interested in. I know, this is something I ought to know by now. Yes, but this is an attempt to raze down all that I have in order to start from scratch in an orderly manner. So every week or fortnight, I will be updating my read list and foray in writers in today's world.
I think that it is simpler and more relevant for me to follow the writing that is happening in today's world at this moment instead of tracing masterpieces decade by decade and reading history. I've tried that and somehow I've lost interest. It seems to me that the kind of writing that is going on these days is a lot more fun and whatever is fun stays with you. When it comes to something like literature, the best of it is done and enjoyed without too much mental work. So now my job's to come up with realistic goals for the month. I am already onto Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of a Day, which is the last of my random reading although it would have inevitably found its way in my read list. After I am done with this book, plan to chart more writers for the coming months. Till then, good night!

On Writing

Nadine Gordimer


• “Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.”



Gao Xingjian


• “Writing eases my suffering... writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.”

                                                                         Graham Greene

• “Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those, who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, which is inherent in a human condition”

                                                                        

Anais Nin
• “If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.”

         

The Write Regime

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.

2. Start no more new books, add no more new material.

3. Don't be nervous. Work calmly, work joyfully, recklessly on whatever is in hand!

4. Work according to program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!

5. When you can't create, you can work ( I absolutely love this one!)
6. Cement a little everyday, rather than add new fertilizers. This is good for me as I love to begin new things, but never follow through.

7. Keep Human! See people, go places, drink. It's amazing how traveling brings out new perspectives in your life.

8. Don't be a draught-horse. Work with pleasure only.

9. Discard the program when you feel like it- but go back to it the next day :) Writers are born with a frustration gene. But thankfully, it's brief in its recurrence.

10. Forget what you want to write. Think only of what you are writing now.

11. Write first and always. Painting, music, cinema, come later.

 

Writers' Block

One of the best things to do when you're suffering from a writers' block and you're convinced that writing is your true calling, is to READ. Read motivating stuff about writing, read silly stuff about writing read about anything, get addicted to a TV series like Games of Thrones as I have been, watch it with mindless involvement, admire the characters, the plot, the action, the themes, just the way it is conceived and the way the characters are created and given depth. Of course, one of the 12 rules of writing is to write a little everyday. This I guess is my quota for today. Obviously it is not very meaningful or readworthy, the black just eats up a little more of the white space and well. Not every word is supposed to mean something is it? Oh Well. I guess the excercise is what really matters. So stray-reader, who's fumbled on this  blog by mistake, go ahead and do something that makes you happy! Stimulate your mind and do something that makes you say- Voila- I love this and I am at peace with everything around me!

Ciao!

Qui scribit bis legit - He who writes reads twice

A few interesting Latin phrases:

Scribere est agere - To write is to act

Sine qua non - Something/someone indispensable

Sub dio - Under the open sky

Ad astra per aspera - To the stars through difficulty

Ad augusta per angusta - To high places by narrow roads

Aude sapere - Dare to know

Cacoethes scribendi - An insatiable urge to write. (Juvenal)

Confiteor - I confess

Fide, non armis - By faith, not arms

Genus irritabile vatum - The irritable race of poets. (Horace)

Hic et nunc - Here and now

In nubibus - In the clouds

Lapsus calami - A slip of the pen

Memorabilia - Memorable things

Meum pactum dictum - My word is my bond

Mvlti svnt vocati, pavci vero electi - Many are called [but] few are chosen

Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis - Unless you will have believed, you will not understand. (St. Augustine)

Verba volant, (littera) scripta manet - Words fly away, the written (letter) remains

Write Quotes

"One's writing can only be as good as one's reading."  - Ben Okri

"Reason and taste, two powers of the intelligence, are rightly the supreme gods of the prose stylist, while to the poet they are only minor deities."  -S.A. (The Future Poetry, 16)

"Once the water is deep enough that you must swim to stay afloat, does it really meatter how deep the pool is? "

"The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw." Virginia Woolf.

"Dream as if you will live forever, live as if you will die today!"  -James Dean

"If you're not lost then you're in a place somebody's already found." Junot Diaz.

Against Sainte-Beuve

"The beautiful things we shall write if we have talent are inside us, indistinct, like the memory of a melody which delights us though we are unable to recapture its outline. Those who are obsessed by this blurred memory of truths they have never known are the men who are gifted ... Talent is like a sort of memory which will enable them finally to bring this indistinct music closer to them, to hear it clearly, to note it down ..." 

                                                                                                                   -Proust

The First Step

I write because I cannot help it. Writing and sculpting are similar. They both begin with nothing- a block of stone or a nebulous mind and both work to chisel a precise image out of formlessness. The human mind and its innumerable shades can never be unraveled through words. But like the troubled lake that apprehends an imperfect moon, words can stumble over visions. Graffiti is a platform to chronicle my writing endeavors and to keep my lazy, petulant mind from falling into wordless slumber. Hopefully there is more activity on this front in the days to come!