Get to the point!

OCCASIONAL RANT NO. 8:

Here is the intro to a Page 1 story in today's DNA:

In a chilling incident, a 19-year-old girl—who was allegedly in a relationship with an advocate—was allegedly raped and later set on fire by him, after he managed to lure her to his house promising to find accommodation for her in a hostel. 

Here is the headline for the same story:

19-year-old girl raped and set ablaze by advocate

Do readers need to be told that this is a "chilling incident"? Shouldn't a hard news intro get to the point right away? Why do many hard news stories in our newspapers begin with a prefatory comment or a subsidiary clause?

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  Ankita Bhattacherjee and 2 others like this.
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    Faye DSouza Let's not miss the ungracefully constructed sentence with so many unnecessary clauses. Why can't newspapers write short, clear, simple sentences?

    6 hours ago · Edited ·  · Catherine Dequadros + 1 other
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    Ankana Sinha Allegedly, twice in one sentence? Why?

    6 hours ago · 
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    Ankita Bhattacherjee Sir, the sub needs to join COMMITS or at least attend your class. :)

    about an hour ago · 
  • 
    

    Faye DSouza Also from today's DNA
    
    "The fear of being targeted on communal lines in the wake of the recent Assam riots has led to an exodus of over 15,000 people from Assam working in Bangalore" (sic)

    43 minutes ago ·

You've written a book? Want to self-publish it? Here's how to do it

Rasana Atreya wanted complete control over "the final product; everything, from pricing to cover design to marketing", so she turned down an offer from a reputed publisher, who did not want to part with the e-book rights, and chose to self-publish her novel.

How did she do it? Here's an excerpt from the article she wrote in the Hindu's "Literary Review" section last Sunday:

I commissioned the book cover and had my manuscript edited professionally, paying a one-time fee for both, instead of a cut in the royalties. This is the sensible approach because both were one-time services (traditional publishers take cuts in royalties because of additional costs like distribution, warehousing etc). If you cannot afford an editor, at least join an online critique group. I’ve been on one for seven years now, and it’s been invaluable.

[When] everything was in place, I formatted the manuscript as an e-book, settled on a selling price, took a deep breath and uploaded it to Amazon.com. Twelve hours later, my book was published.

Was her decision a good one? Did she make any money? Find out here: "My self-publishing journey".

• Also read: A Huffington Post article recommended by Rasana Atreya — "6 Ways To Make Your Short Story Collection Stand Out".

Want to learn how to write a sentence? (Who doesn’t?)

An entire book dedicated to learning how to write a sentence? A book that is so absorbing you lose yourself in it? A meaningful book about an important subject that does not read like a text book? I would never have thought it possible. But How to Write A Sentence: And How to Read One is just such a book.

Literary critic and New York Times columnist Stanley Fish, the author of this incomparable work, writes in the opening chapter that he belongs to the tribe of sentence watchers: "Some appreciate fine art; others appreciate fine wines. I appreciate fine sentences."

And what fine sentences we get in Fish's book. Here's one from a legendary movie, The Magnificent Seven:

If God didn't want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep. (Bandit leader Eli Wallach explaining why he isn't bothered much by the hardships suffered by the peasant-farmers whose food and supplies he plunders.)

To enable us to appreciate this sentence, Fish provides an artful analysis:

The sentence is snapped off, almost like the flick of a whip; it has the form of proverbial wisdom... and the air of finality and certainty it aspires to is clinched by the parallelism of clauses that also feature the patterned repetition of consonants and vowels: "didn't want" and "would not have", "sheared" and "sheep". We know that "sheep" is coming because of "sheared" and when it arrives it seems inevitable and, and at least from one perspective, just. Not bad for a bandit.

And not bad for a certain Mr Fish either! Now that we know why that sentence works, we can get down to crafting a few like that, can't we?

STANLEY FISH

Many short sentences from many popular books are analysed in How to Write A Sentence. But there are some long ones, too, including this famous 310-word sentence from Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963):

...when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you go forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" — then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. 

And here's Fish explaining exactly why King's sentence is such a majestic work of art:

King is replying to the question (sometimes asked by his colleagues in the movement) “Why don’t you wait a while and hold back on the sit-ins and marches?” The answer is at once withheld and given. It is formally withheld by the succession of “when” clauses (the technical name is anaphora) that offer themselves as preliminary to the direct assertion but are the direct assertion; each “when” clause is presented as a piece of the answer, but is in itself fully sufficient as an answer. “Here is the reason we can’t wait,” each says, but if that isn’t enough, here is another and another.

As the huge dependent clause (a clause that does not stand alone as a complete sentence) grows and grows, the independent clause — the sentence’s supposedly main assertion — becomes less and less necessary.

Meanwhile, there is an incredible amount of cross-referencing and rhetorical counterpointing going on among the clauses as they advance inexorably toward the waiting, and foreknown, conclusion.

A full explication of these inter-clause effects would require an essay. It would include an analysis of the rhyming pattern of “will”, “whim”, and “kill”, which links and bookends the pairs “mothers and fathers”, sisters and brothers”, and “brothers and sisters”.

It would include an analysis of the interplay between inner and outer that begins with the phrase “ominous clouds of inferiority”, continues with “her little mental sky”, and reaches a climax with King’s acknowledgment of “inner fears” that at once reflect and war with “outer resentments”.

It would include an analysis of the progression from “nigger” to “boy” to “John” in counterpoint with the withheld honorific “Mrs.” and ending with the word “Negro”, which does not quite reclaim the dignity history has taken from it.

But it is enough to note the main effect: the building of intolerable pressure as the succession of “when” clauses details the layered humiliation every black man, woman, and child suffers, and then the spectacularly understated, even quite, anticlimactic conclusion “then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait”.

It is a tremendous rhetorical achievement, a sentence for the ages, but again you can learn how to imitate it, if not to match it. Pick any topic, even a trivial one, say, getting up in the morning in the face of all the reasons not to: “When you’ve stayed up all night watching Rocky for the twentieth time, when the temperature is below freezing, and you’re warm underneath the blanket, when the day promises only drudgery and humiliation, when the conclusion that your life has been for naught and no one will miss you seems self-evident, when everyone you have ever cared for is either dead or angry with you, when the only pleasure you can anticipate is a cup of coffee you can barely afford, when the thought of one more day doing something you absolutely hate is unbearable, then you remind yourself of what Scarlett O’Hara said: ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ ”

If writing is what you do at work or if writing is what you love, you will want to get hold of a copy of How to Write A Sentence now. And I mean now.

• Want to read an excerpt from the book? Check out the NPR Books review — "Think You Know 'How to Write a Sentence'?"

• Want to know how Stanley Fish's book stacks up against that enduring guide to writing, The Elements of Style? Check out this Financial Times feature: "The art of good writing".

• Want to know how to write well in English even though English is your second language? Check out William Zinsser's tips here: "In one place, everything you need to know about writing in English".

• Want to know where sentences come from? Check out Verlyn Klinkenborg's column in the New York Times.

***

“There is much to learn from Stanley Fish’s approach”

An appreciation of How to Write A Sentence: And How to Read One by Dr. Pradeep Banerjee, who teaches economics and management at Commits:

Open a book and there they are. Arranged in sequence, they are neatly positioned and waiting to be read. These are sentences. They come with a power of their own, they weave a magic that the reader willingly submits to and they transport the reader to a world that in turn he relates to with gusto, with a feel, and with an animated attachment to. The reader relates to sentences in a manner that is less seen when relating to other inanimate things and aspects. Think about them, and you are reminded of the gossamer softness of an early spring morning that was seen and felt many years ago. Think of them, and the wildness of a Russian monk comes and hits you with a force of things that have gone amok. Think about them and the speed of the horses carrying the rider across the great and endless steppes comes along vividly. They are capable of creating the loneliness, the angst, the sharp twang of separation, the beauty of a still night, the desperation that a gambler feels when he knows that he is trading with the devil, and a host of all these. Sentences have a quality of their own.

And then there is the writer who writes these sentences. He is a step away, missing from the text that he writes. The text in most cases is not about him. He has created the wherewithal, the magic, the severity, the depths, the anxious moments, the longing and he has not drawn attention to himself. The sentences have a life of their own, and away from the writer. Such is the approach the writer of sentences brings along. Can, then, one learn to write sentences of the type that is under reference; sentences that come with a potential of going way beyond standing up and being counted? Yes, indeed that can be is the message. Try it, and see how well you shape up. There is a way forward, and Professor Stanley Fish offers you a book to do just that. How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One is that book.

The professor is candid about his approach; he appreciates ‘fine sentences’. He writes on why this is so, and he also writes as to what the reader can do to write fine sentences in turn. His writing shows that he is a connoisseur, and there is much to learn from his writing. And Ramesh in his write-up shows that he is himself an aficionado of the same art.

How to write a gripping article on office lunch thieves (yes, you read that right)

If you have read "25 commandments for journalists" and "How writers can overcome reader resistance", you are sure to appreciate a Bloomberg BusinessWeek feature on, of all things, office workers who steal your lunch.

I hear you ask, "Is that even a story idea?"

Yes, big-time. Ask anyone who has been the victim of lunch theft at work. Ask youngsters who live in a hostel that provides a common kitchen and refrigerator. Ask Tapasya Mitra Mazumder who told me earlier today that she stopped leaving food in her hostel refrigerator after she found a creepy bite mark in her wad of butter.

"But," you continue, "what can you write after you have put down a couple of points? How do you make this story interesting enough for readers?"

Well, there's a lot you can learn on that front from Claire Suddath, who wrote this piece on office lunch thieves in the July 30-August 5 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek.

She begins with a colourful anecdote to engage her readers:

My friend Peter’s boss always eats lunch in the office — it’s just not always his lunch. If his boss finds a sandwich lying around, he scarfs it down without a second thought. People warned Peter about this when he took the job, at an aerospace tooling company near Seattle. Once his boss snatched an apple right off his desk; Peter has now taken to hiding his snacks in drawers.

Having engaged her readers, Suddath proceeds to "entertain" them. The opening line of the second paragraph makes it clear that Peter's boss is not the only aberrant around:

Everything is up for grabs in office kitchens: soda, coffee creamer, potato chips, it doesn’t matter.

Then we get an example from Suddath's own experience, which is followed by advice from a business etiquette expert. You will marvel at the wit in this particular paragraph.

After some more interesting nuggets of information presented in a smoothly flowing manner, Suddath tells readers how the problem can be tackled, with the help of Kerry Miller, the creator of a blog (you have to read Miller's advice, and also visit the blog concerned).

By the time you have come to the final sentence of the feature, you realise you have not only been engaged and entertained but also enlightened. What more can you ask of a writer?

• Read the feature in its entirety here: "Stop! Lunch Thief!"

• Illustration courtesy: Bloomberg Businessweek/Erik T. Johnson 

FROM PASSIVEAGGRESSIVENOTES.COM: “People steal other people’s food and drink so often in my office that security put up a notice,” says our submitter in Florida. “Apparently, the sign isn’t working.” Instead, the notes left by the victims have turned into an ongoing office-wide joke.

How writers can overcome reader resistance

Following on from yesterday's Reading Room post on Tim Radford's 25 commandments for journalists, here is some terrific advice from an experienced editor and author, Arthur Plotnik, who has contributed a guest post to the very useful Daily Writing Tips blog.

I was hooked by Plotnik's electrifying opening line:

All we writers crave is to charge into the resistant, overloaded brain of a reader and shoot forked lightning through every last dendrite.

Who can resist such a creative intro? Who can hold off the urge to read the next line and the next paragraph and all the paragraphs that follow? Not me. And, I hope, not you either. Especially if you want to be engaged, entertained, and enlightened. And definitely if you want to be a good writer.

Here are the points Plotnik is emphasising:

1. Specificity.

2. Supercharged verbs.

3. High performance modifiers.

4. Fresh intensifiers.

5. Sound words.

6. Surprise images.

7. Nowness.

8. Street beat.

9. Big nature.

10. Tough talk / Irreverence.

11. Understatement.

12. Torque through intensity.

And here is his post in its entirety with all these points explained in detail, with examples: "Twelve Non-Negotiable Elements of Force in Writing". Have a ball!

"When you sit down to write, there is only one important person in your life. This is someone you will never meet, called a reader."

Thus begins possibly the most important list of 25 commandments for journalists. Tim Radford, a former Guardian journalist whose brilliant work this is, says he began compiling these commandments after he was invited to train some editors "because I had just asked myself what was the most important thing to remember about writing a story, and the answer came back loud and clear: 'To make somebody read it.' "

For media students who aspire to a career in journalism, obeying each commandment on this list will, I guarantee, make you a better journalist.

• MY FAVOURITE COMMANDMENTS:

Journalism is important. It must never, however, be full of its own self-importance. Nothing sends a reader scurrying to the crossword, or the racing column, faster than pomposity. Therefore simple words, clear ideas and short sentences are vital in all storytelling. So is a sense of irreverence.

If in doubt, assume the reader knows nothing. However, never make the mistake of assuming that the reader is stupid. The classic error in journalism is to overestimate what the reader knows and underestimate the reader's intelligence.

There is always an ideal first sentence — an intro, a way in — for any article. It really helps to think of this one before you start writing, because you will discover that the subsequent sentences write themselves, very quickly. This is not evidence that you are glib, facile, shallow or slick. Or even gifted. It merely means you hit the right first sentence.

Words have meanings. Respect those meanings. Get radical and look them up in the dictionary, find out where they have been. Then use them properly. Don't flaunt authority by flouting your ignorance. Don't whatever you do go down a hard road to hoe, without asking yourself how you would hoe a road. Or for that matter, a roe.

Read. Read lots of different things. Read the King James Bible, and Dickens, and poems by Shelley, and Marvel Comics and thrillers by Chester Himes and Dashiell Hammett. Look at the astonishing things you can do with words. Note the way they can conjure up whole worlds in the space of half a page.

Read the post in its entirety here: "A manifesto for the simple scribe – my 25 commandments for journalists".

• Thank you, Maitreya Jagalur, for the alert.

Good grammar is important for everyone, not just journalists

There is a notion that it is important to have good writing skills, which would include a sound knowledge of the rules of grammar, only if one wants to become a journalist.

Here is a brilliant post on the Harvard Business Review website that puts paid to that notion. Titled "I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here's Why" and written by entrepreneur Kyle Wiens, who calls himself a grammar stickler, the piece will come as an eye-opener to many young people who have only a passing acquaintance with grammar. Wiens writes:

Everyone who applies for a position at either of my companies ... takes a mandatory grammar test. Extenuating circumstances aside (dyslexia, English language learners, etc.), if job hopefuls can't distinguish between "to" and "too," their applications go into the bin.

And then he explains, in words that warm the cockles of my heart, why good grammar is important for everyone:

[G]rammar is relevant for all companies. Yes, language is constantly changing, but that doesn't make grammar unimportant. Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can't tell the difference between their, there, and they're.

Good grammar makes good business sense — and not just when it comes to hiring writers. Writing isn't in the official job description of most people in our office. Still, we give our grammar test to everybody, including our salespeople, our operations staff, and our programmers.

On the face of it, my zero tolerance approach to grammar errors might seem a little unfair. After all, grammar has nothing to do with job performance, or creativity, or intelligence, right?

Wrong. If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use "it's," then that's not a learning curve I'm comfortable with. So, even in this hyper-competitive market, I will pass on a great programmer who cannot write.

Read the article in its entirety here.

ADDITIONAL READING: On Ragan's PR Daily, "12 unforgivable writing mistakes".

ALSO READ:

• "What's the point of an education if you remain illiterate?"

• "50 Facebook rants to make you think about bad English vs good English"

• "If you don't read, you can't write" 

• "A marketing whiz and the lessons she learned from journalism"

"U" vs "You"

OCCASIONAL RANT NO. 6:

Didn't I tell u it's a charmed life?

That's a sentence from the "Letter from the Editor" in the July 4 issue of Filmfare.

I am aghast that the editor, Jitesh Pillaai, has resorted to using SMS lingo. But this is Filmfare, so perhaps I should not be surprised.

Isn't there a difference between "who's" and "whose"?

OCCASIONAL RANT NO. 5:

The Times of India Crest Edition of June 30 features an interview with poet and author Jeet Thayil by Naomi Canton. Here's the paragraph I have a problem with:

"Sipping a glass of red wine in a French cafe amidst Oxford's dreaming spires where the production toured this week, the 52-year-old, who's first novel Narcopolis explores the drugs-filled underbelly of 1970s Mumbai, says: 'Don't these subjects interest you? They are in my top ten topics to write about, yes.' "

Doesn't anyone at the Times know the difference between "who's" and "whose"? How is it the subs did not catch the typo?

And while I am on the subject, why use "amidst" when "amid" will do?

A question of illiteracy

OCCASIONAL RANT NO. 4:

Headline in the Economic Times, June 24 — "Why the big four Andhra Pradesh-based infrastructure companies GMR, GVK, Lanco & IVRCL are in trouble?"

That question mark at the end is a clear indication that an illiterate person was on duty on the ET desk that day. I have seen such headlines in regional newspapers, but in ET? This is a shocker.

That headline should have been written thus: "Why the big four Andhra Pradesh-based infrastructure companies GMR, GVK, Lanco & IVRCL are in trouble" (meaning, read this article to know why difficult times are looming for the four companies named).

OR, if a question mark was needed, thus: Why are the big four Andhra Pradesh-based infrastructure companies GMR, GVK, Lanco & IVRCL in trouble?

• Thank you, Ankana Sinha, for the alert.

Upliftment? UpliftMENT?

OCCASIONAL RANT NO. 3:

In The Times of India Crest Edition of June 23, Purnima Sharma interviews Salima Raza, writer and director of a new play about the great Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz and his Irish wife, Alys. Here is a quote from the interview:

"Their camaraderie was like a meeting of souls. Alys, like Faiz, was as intelligent, passionate and as committed to love as to their common cause — the upliftment of the poor and deprived, " says Raza.

That should be "uplift of the poor", madam.

• Also read: "Localite vs local; upliftment vs uplift".

A prime example of an illiterate sentence

OCCASIONAL RANT NO. 2:

In "The Fantastic 40s", its cover story on June 24, The Economic Times on Sunday features Mumbai trauma surgeon Anand Patil in a sidebar with this ghastly faux pas in the caption:

"New goals for life: For eg: To run all five great marathons of the world."

Here's the problem: "e.g." is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase "exempli gratia", which means "for example". So you CANNOT write "for eg".

• Also read: "What's the point of an education if you remain illiterate?"

Who can say no to a weekly interestingness digest?

It is not often that I can be persuaded to subscribe to a blog by parting with my e-mail address and signing up to receive a weekly newsletter. I am picky that way. So far, I have only opened up my in-box to one blogger and that is Dr. Mardy Grothe. But, a couple of days ago, I chanced upon Brain Pickings, a veritable treasure chest lovingly handcrafted by Maria Popova, and after having studied the wonderful "pickings" on offer, I have just now signed up for the "free weekly interestingness digest". Who can say no to an interestingness digest?

What first attracted me to Brain Pickings was Popova's post about nine books on reading and writing. Many of my favourite books, including The Elements of Style, Stephen King's On Writing, and Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury, are on the list. There are some books here that were new to me: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott; How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One, by Stanley Fish; and Ernest Hemingway on Writing. (Flipkart — here I come!)

Of course, it's not just the list that I found interesting but what Popova had to say about each book and the excerpts she has chosen from each one. Here is her introductory comment on the The Elements of Style edition that is No. 1 on her list:

If anyone can make grammar fun, it’s Maira Kalman — The Elements of Style Illustrated marries Kalman’s signature whimsy with Strunk and White’s indispensable style guide to create an instant classic.

And here's Popova on How to Write a Sentence:

It belongs not on the shelf of your home library but in your brain’s most deep-seated amphibian sensemaking underbelly — an insightful, rigorous manual on the art of language that may just be one of the best such tools since The Elements of Style.

Surely you want to read more? And possibly sign up for the "free weekly interestingness digest"? Here you go: "New Year’s Resolution Reading List: 9 Books on Reading and Writing".

• Also read: "10 Tips on Writing from David Ogilvy". And you absolutely must check out Maria Popova's bookshelf.

• Illustration courtesy: Brain Pickings.

• UPDATE (August 10, 2012): My post on How to Write a Sentence: "Want to learn how to write a sentence? (Who doesn’t?)".

"Seven ways to improve your writing … right now"

James Chartrand is confident the following advice will make you a better writer:

1. Be concise and be clear
2. Keep it short
3. Stick to three
4. Watch your tone
5. Talk Food, Sex, and Danger
6. Break it up
7. Stay on topic

You may already be aware of some of the points on this list. What makes this post on Copyblogger interesting to read is the snappy writing. What James Chartrand preaches, James Chartrand practises.

Elaborating on "Watch your tone", for instance, Chartrand says it’s easy for writers to assume readers can pick up on our mood and tone from our writing:

After all, we certainly know our feelings, humor, intent, and state of mind at the time we write. But for readers, it’s clear as mud. They’re guessing at your tone — and they may guess wrong.

Here’s an example:

    Honey. Please.

Was I exasperated and rolling my eyes? Smiling and gently teasing? Acidly sarcastic? Or maybe just eating toast and reaching for the bear-shaped bottle?

As a reader, you have no idea unless the words around that phrase cue you into my written tone.

That's great advice. In fact, all of it is great advice. Not to mention, a treat to read. Go for it here: "7 Ways to Improve Your Writing … Right Now". Also scan the "popular articles" list provided alongside. Take a look at "11 Smart Tips for Brilliant Writing". Read "How Twitter makes you a better writer". Compare this post with mine: "Two benefits of Twitter I can think of".

• Are you curious to know more about James Chartrand? Would you like to know why James Chartrand wears women's underpants? Check out this post.

It took him just two hours to write a poem, half a day to finish a short story, and nine days for a full-scale novel.

You will have to write and put away or burn a lot of material before you are comfortable in this medium. You might as well start now and get the necessary work done. For I believe that eventually quantity will make for quality.

This practical advice on writing, which I share every year with my students, comes from Ray Bradbury, the American author of more than 500 published works (so he knew what he was talking about).

For Bradbury, who died earlier this week in Los Angeles, writing was playing. "I don’t think I know what writer's block is," he said. "I never had it. My typewriter goes everywhere I go. I get up at 3 a.m. every day, head for the keyboard, laugh a lot, then go back to bed."

This gem of a quote is from The Writing Life, edited by Maria Arana, who tells us in her introduction to Bradbury’s essay in the book that it took him just two hours to write a poem, half a day to finish a short story, and nine days for a full-scale novel.

FULL OF LIFE: RAY BRADBURY AT A BOOK SIGNING IN CALIFORNIA IN 1997.

Zen in the Art of Writing, which he first published in 1990 (and which was my first Flipkart acquisition), also gives us a peek into Bradbury's enjoyment of his work. I remember taking a quote from Zen and posting it as my Facebook status update soon after I began reading it:

If you're writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you're only half a writer.... For the first thing a writer should be is — excited.

The book is packed with practical — that word again — tips on writing from a man who was clearly a master of the craft. If your aim is to write and to enjoy writing, I can't recommend Zen in the Art of Writing highly enough.

• The New York Times was exuberant, fittingly, in its praise of Ray Bradbury the day after he died. Read the obituary — and learn why more than eight million copies of Bradbury's books have been sold in 36 languages — here: "He Brought Mars to Earth With a Lyrical Mastery".

• The day before he died, the New Yorker published an autobiographical essay by Ray Bradbury, in which he described the influences that shaped his life as a boy and that later had an impact on his life as a writer. Read the essay here: "Take Me Home".

• Also read: "Remembering Ray Bradbury with 11 Timeless Quotes on Joy, Failure, Writing, Creativity, and Purpose"

• Also read: "If you love what you do, is it 'work'?"

• Also read: "In one place, everything you want to know about writing in English".

• Photograph courtesy: Associated Press.

When it comes to writing, experience is NOT everything

Here is a job ad in the latest issue of The Economist:

Vacancy: The Economist is hiring a finance writer to cover hedge funds, private equity and insurance. Experience is less important than the ability to write simply, insightfully and entertainingly. Applicants should send a copy of their CV, along with a 500-word article on this bit of finance, by June 15th to financejob@economist.com.

Now you know why The Economist, which was first published in September 1843 to take part in "a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress", is considered one of the world's best magazines.

• Also read: "Corporate role models: Mother Teresa and (gasp!) Lady Gaga".

The pleasure is all ours, Anjum!

Bangalore's very own Anjum Hasan will be celebrating the publication of her new book at an event at the British Council here on Tuesday. (Anjum spent her early years in Shillong and is now the Books Editor of the venerable New Delhi-headquartered Caravan magazine — but it is in Bangalore that, I like to think, she found her calling.)

Difficult Pleasures, the new short-fiction collection that was released in March, has already earned praise from critics. "The 13 stories ... are a good indicator why Anjum Hasan is widely regarded as a rising star on the literary horizon, as fluid in prose as poetry," wrote the reviewer in The Hindu earlier this month.

How did Anjum get her start? Who are the short story writers she admires? What does she think of short stories? Here, in an excerpt from an e-mail Anjum sent out along with details of the launch of Difficult Pleasures, she provides the answers to those questions:

As a child, I learnt the concept early — the name of the ingredient crucial to storytelling. It was a word my parents used often and approvingly for clever people, the word ‘imaginative’. I knew that if I had to count for anything, I would have to learn to make things up. From the tidy and well-stocked shelves in the children’s section of Shillong’s municipal library, one could pick out and immerse oneself in any made-up world one wanted to. Then there were the stories that one didn’t choose but loved all the same — the English high school reader khichdi of such supposedly immortal texts as an excerpt from John Buchan’s 1910s thriller Thirty-Nine Steps or that terrifying Chekov story, ‘The Bet’ or the highly sentimental ‘The Last Lesson’ by Alphonse Daudet — set in the French region of Alsace-Lorraine which, after the end of the Franco-Prussian war, is on the point of passing into Prussian hands.

When I got to university, one of my monthly pleasures was the arrival in the library of cracklingly new copies of American journals such as Partisan Review and The Southern Review. Before the poems, I would turn to the short stories. What would impress me were not so much the stories in the stories — in the sense of the chain of events described — as the texture — clothes, food, the way people spoke, how colours were named. I envied that texture; I wanted it. I started writing poems as a way of telling stories, trying to locate the specific, the expressible in my own world.

Many short story writers I admire, such as Qurratulain Hyder or Mahasweta Devi, are not writing individually distinctive stories as much as describing in each story a slightly different facet of the same world. Several recent collections of short fiction have been billed ‘linked stories’ because a single background runs through the collection, and characters recur. But that idea of ‘linked’ is often implicit without needing to be highlighted in the older writers. RK Narayan’s An Astrologer’s Day and Other Stories is obviously a compact — stories about tradesmen and professional men who must undertake various minor and comic negotiations in order to keep going in an imperfect world.

Perhaps this is true of many short story writers. Raymond Carver’s stories can each seem to have a different quality of strangeness but aren’t they usually about people like himself, the unsentimental, the down and out, the working poor? I’m fascinated by this ability in a short story writer — to create a world in relation to which each story is but one expression.

But I’m also fascinated by the opposite — how a single story, or even a glimpse of a single character within it, does not necessarily have to rely on larger references for its appeal. My own characters are often solitary individuals whose choices are no longer so determined by older social mores, but who therefore have to invent their freedoms. They don’t draw on a world as much as try to locate one. Have I succeeded, therefore, in making things up? Is it possible, walking down a dark street and seeing a lighted doorway, to imagine the world beyond it? The mystery of that lighted doorway is what keeps the story going. You can never walk through it, every story is a just a means of trying.

I just love that phrase, "The mystery of that lighted doorway is what keeps the story going." Back in 2010, Anjum had visited Commits for an interactive session with our students, who were so captivated by what she had to say that two hours just whizzed by... and many students didn't even get to ask her their questions. So, later, I sent them to Anjum via e-mail. You can read those questions and her responses here: "A-1 advice from an author".

For more details about Anjum Hasan's works, visit her website: AnjumHasan.com.

• I have already bought a copy of Difficult Pleasures. After I finish reading it, I'll place it in the Commits library, next to the copies of Neti, Neti and Lunatic in My Head.

• EXTERNAL READING: "The long and short of a story", Open magazine's interview with Anjum Hasan.

Never judge a book by its cover

I had seen Broken News in bookstores but the cover was a big put-off (it still is); I imagined it to be another of those insipid novels by a wannabe writer who just happens to be a journalist.

But after one of my students, Sonakshi Nandy (Class of 2014), mentioned it in her e-mail a couple of days ago, and after two other students, Ankita Sengupta and Sohini Guharoy (both Class of 2013), talked about the book and about their interactions with the author during their recent internship at CNN-IBN, I went to the Just Books library and borrowed Broken News.

I began reading it the same night and I was thrilled to learn that I was wrong about the book — and the author. What do they say about not judging a book by its cover?

Amrita Tripathi, a senior journalist and anchor with CNN-IBN, certainly has a way with words and Broken News, which is all about life — and love gone sour — at a major television news channel, is peppered with many original lines. Here's one: "...you never see the spots when you're looking the damn leopard in the face...".

And here's her description of the Mayur Vihar locality in New Delhi:

A suburb that's captured the essence of the Indian middle class so deeply, so thoroughly, that it's turned grey. And it's not just the buildings: the dreams, the air, everything is thick with it. Oh, the dull self-effacement of it; the quiet overwhelming industriousness of it. No glamour here, that's for sure.

(I have been to Mayur Vihar a few times — Tripathi has got it down pat.)

I also loved the thought and effort that have gone into the WHAT WE LEARN "intertitles" between chapters (see below).

But will young people who liked, and still like, Sidney Sheldon and now rave about Chetan Bhagat "get" the very cerebral Amrita Tripathi?

(Don't get me wrong — there was a time when I used to read Sidney Sheldon, too, but that was in high school and the early college years. As for Chetan Bhagat, I admire him for having gotten so many young people reading; here's my RR post: "Chetan Bhagat on how to take your English to the next level".)

• UPDATE (May 26, 2012): Soon you will not need to judge Broken News by this particular cover. Why? See Twitter conversation below:

• UPDATE (May 27, 2012): The latest issue of Open has an unusual first-person feature by Amrita Tripathi on what it means to take the Delhi Metro to work and back every day. Reading it took me back to my days as a local train commuter in Mumbai. Read Tripathi's — and I have to say it again: cerebral — piece here: The Metro Magnet. Last year, Tripathi was in Los Angeles to cover the Grammy Awards for CNN-IBN. After she got back, she contributed this article to Open: California Dreaming: Lady Gaga speaking to me after she hatched out of an egg, Jay Leno calling me pretty, and other Grammy tales from LA.

•  UPDATE (July 19, 2013): Broken News has indeed been re-issued with a new cover, as promised by Amrita Tripathi in her tweet to me (above). I purchased a copy at Landmark yesterday and it has now been placed in the Commits library.

From industry newbie to full-fledged TV news correspondent: Follow the travails of the intrepid "Satyabhama Menon"

SHWETA GANESH KUMAR WITH FANS AT THE BANGALORE LAUNCH OF HER NEW BOOK.

It was a privilege — and a great pleasure — to be invited to say a few words about a dynamic young author and her new book at the launch event in Bangalore on Wednesday.

Shweta Ganesh Kumar, who has been the Bangalore correspondent for CNN-IBN (she later joined Greenpeace India as a communications officer and is today a full-time writer and travel columnist), has two books to her credit already. Coming up on the Show... The Travails of a News Trainee, which was published last year, featured aspiring TV news reporter Satyabhama Menon and her life as a newbie in the industry. In Between the Headlines: The Travails of a News Reporter, the book that was released on Wednesday, we get to read about Satyabhama's experiences as a full-fledged news correspondent.

Both books are easy reads. And both books, since they are based loosely on the author's own career as a television journalist, have important insights to offer youngsters who are aspiring to join one of India's many TV news channels.

I would also recommend Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines for three reasons: Language, Content, and Message.

Language: Good writers use simple language to express powerful ideas. Take Khushwant Singh. Or M.J. Akbar. Or even the current favourite of young adults, Suzanne Collins, the author of The Hunger Games trilogy. Shweta, too, keeps it simple: When you read her books, you won't need to keep a dictionary by your side.

Content: Reading Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines will acquaint media students (as well as anyone with an interest in the news-gathering process) with the challenges faced by television journalists. Sure, both books are works of fiction but there are kernels of truth in the descriptions of the obstacles in Satyabhama's path as she struggles to present her news stories on her channel.

Message: There are many things you can learn from reading Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines, and they are not all about journalism alone. The underlying message in the books is that it is important to take the initiative. And to stand up for what you believe is right. The books also seem to prove my favourite adage: If you love what you do, you get to do what you love.

SHWETA IN AN INTERACTION WITH THE AUDIENCE AT THE BANGALORE LAUNCH.

Two days after Between the Headlines was released in Bangalore, Shweta headed to Pune for the launch event in that city. And this week she is off to Kochi to release the book there. But hectic schedule notwithstanding, like the good professional she is, she made time to answer in detail via e-mail five questions I had for her on subjects ranging from the audience she kept in mind while writing her books to the note of cynicism some readers may have picked up on in both Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines:

1. What is the audience you had in mind when writing Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines?

One of my favourite sayings about writing and reading is “Write the book you want to read.” And this is primarily what I had in mind when writing both Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines.

As a fresh journalism graduate and newly recruited news trainee in 2006, I had always wondered whether there were others who had shared my experiences. I searched my favourite bookstores for books with fictional characters I could empathise with, but found none. All the fiction books that I found on Indian journalism were written by senior journalists who had written about major news events and campaigns. I did not find anything on the shelves that told the story of bright-eyed news trainees and rookie reporters and talked about what it is like to be on the bottom-most level of the news pyramid. These were the people I wanted to write about and write for.

Also, as a working TV news reporter, I had come across a lot of people who wanted to know just how the news was produced and what life behind the camera was like for a TV news reporter. These were the readers I had in mind when I started writing the books.

2. There is a notion that writing a book is not that difficult. But I would suggest that a lot of hard work is involved. Your thoughts? Can you also give us an idea of your writing schedule?

The biggest challenge about being a full-time writer is sticking with it to the end, in the absence of an external editor, boss, or deadline. Especially in the beginning — when you have no idea that your manuscript might be picked up for publication at all — it is easy to sit down and put your hands up.

Every writer has their own, personal approach to the writing process. My own style is built around discipline and being methodical. The hard part is to make sure that you buckle down every day and type out a certain amount of words to reach that ultimate goal of a completed manuscript.

It is also very easy to procrastinate or give up. In my case, it was that intense need to see my published book in my hand that kept me going as well as the full-fledged support from my family.

Whenever I start a book I decide on a certain number of words for the final manuscript. I then work backwards to decide on the number of words I have to write per day to finish the first draft of the manuscript by a certain date. I try to stick to my schedule no matter where I am. I also put down tentative chapter outlines and then fill them up as I go. After I finish the first draft of a novel, I let it lie for at least two months till I look at it again with fresh eyes.

3. How did you find a publisher? That couldn't have been easy, either. And how did you deal with rejections? I think aspiring writers will be looking to you for inspiration in this regard.

Rejection is a very hard obstacle to get past. But I’d say that it also depends on the way you use those rejection letters that you are most certainly going to get. (Well, most certainly if you decide to mail manuscripts off to publishers without the backing of an agent or a recommendation like I did.)

The first rejection was heart-breaking. I am quite sure that I went through the five stages of grief when I received that stinging little note. But I bounced back, thanks to my parents and my husband. I started filing away my rejection letters in a folder named “Motivation” and as soon as I got one, I would mail the manuscript to yet another publisher. I believe that, as a young, unknown writer, this is the only way you can handle rejection, without letting it defeat you.

My first publisher Srishti was the 22nd publisher I had sent my manuscript to, having found e-mail addresses and mailing addresses on the web. Good Times Books, the publisher of my second book, approached me for my manuscript after they saw how well the first book had done.

4. “If you want to be a good writer, you have to be a good reader.” This is what I tell all my students at Commits. Can you elaborate on the importance of reading in your life and the role of reading in your writing?

I’ve had the good fortune to grow up surrounded by books. My parents started reading to me at an age that I cannot even remember and that is what motivated me to start putting down my thoughts, no matter how silly or random they were.

My reading helped me stand in good stead in my career as a journalist. And today while I am a writer, I am a reader first. I don’t think it is possible for any writer to ignore reading if she or he wants to connect with others and to learn the many ways of expressing their thoughts in the best possible way.

5. And, finally, some readers may have concerns over what they feel is a note of cynicism in your books when it comes to the electronic media. How would you address those concerns? And what would you like to say to young people whose ambition is to be good television journalists?

To my readers who feel there is a note of cynicism in my books, I’d like to say that it surely wasn’t meant to be that way. Both the books were written with a very subjective and personal point of view. It does not necessarily reflect the current status of the Indian broadcast news industry.

Also, I am a very emotional person and as a working TV news journalist I used to get attached to the people whose stories I reported. I would want to make sure that I could take these issues to their logical conclusion. However, I soon found out that as a reporter it is not always possible to do so. I know many of my colleagues have faced this dilemma as well and it is this that I have tried to convey through my book’s protagonist, Satyabhama Menon.

To the young people who aspire to be TV news journalists, I’d like to say that you need to remember that you are a reporter first and your duty is to report stories and make sure that you in your limited way are able to amplify the voice of the people. However, you are a reporter and you need to understand that being objective is key and that to go far in your chosen profession, you need to find that fine balance between being an activist and an unbiased newsperson.

• You can also read an interview with Shweta that was published in The Hindu here: Behind the Scenes.

A sure cure for those who believe that good writing necessarily involves the use of bombastic phrases and big words

‎"From 2002 to 2012, it has been one long, heart wrenching and mind searing decade; an agonising 10 years that saw us corralled into a black hole of existential angst provoked by a fratricidal polemic catechism that cast serious doubt on our intrinsic identity as a civilised nation". What is the journalist trying to say here? Why can't journalists write in English in English dailies/sites?

This lament on Facebook by my friend Sudhir Prabhu gives me an opportunity to ride my favourite hobby-horse: Railing against the decline in standards of written English and correcting the alarming tendency to believe that "flowery" English is good English.

Sudhir was referring to a column he had read on Rediff.com, not in a newspaper. Written by someone called Vivek Gumaste, the article is a comment on the SIT report on Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. After reading that dense intro, my heart went out to Sudhir. Really, what does Gumaste's opening sentence mean? A quick search on the net revealed this little tidbit about the writer: "Vivek Gumaste is a US-based academic and political commentator." Ah! Mystery solved — Gumaste, from what I can make out, is most emphatically NOT a journalist; he is an academic, and academic writers love clutter, which explains why his piece is littered with "academese".

I have to say here, though, that our English newspapers and magazines are also guilty, sometimes, of publishing news reports and features written in a language that, to put it mildly, is uninteresting.

Which brings me to a book that has just been delivered to me by Flipkart.

Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers is a sure cure for those who believe that good writing necessarily involves the use of bombastic phrases and big words. Written by Harold Evans, this book is primarily for journalists, but "its lessons are of immense value to all who face the problem of giving information, whether to the general public or within business, professional, or social organisations".

Evans has been hailed as a "great editor, great teacher of editors" by one of his successors at The Times (London). He has also been praised as a "master of how to use the English language". And Essential English comes highly recommended by The Society of Editors: "The book was required reading for all those who became journalists in the 1970s. This new edition must become required reading for all those who will become journalists in the new millennium."

Writing in the preface, Neil Fowler, president of the Society of Editors, explains why this book is essential reading:

It has become far too fashionable for the use of good English to be derided. Indeed our own profession has not always helped the matter. Newspapers, radio stations, and television broadcasters have all contributed to sloppy usage of the language. This is not to say that English should not be dynamic and move forward. Of course it should. But it must also be correct. There is a virtue in all language being correct and the journalist who believes otherwise is a poor journalist.

...information is of no use at all if it is obscured by poor, jargon-ridden, and dense English. Clear English should be a priority for all those who use the language. And news English at its best is the clearest English of all.

• Essential English consists of nine chapters, each of which is an education in itself. Evans begins with "The Making of a Newspaper", before moving on to "Good English", "Words", "Watch this Language", "The Structure of a News Story — Intros", The Structure of a News Story — The News Lead", and "Background". He ends the book with "Headlines" and "Headline Vocabulary". Order your copy from Flipkart today.

ALSO READ:

* The book you must read to rid your English of Indlish. In other words, read this book to learn to write plain English

* In one place, everything you want to know about writing in English