A-1 advice from an author

A few months ago we had a distinguished guest at Commits: Anjum Hasan, poet, writer, communications consultant, now books editor of The Caravan magazine, and author of the two popular novels Lunatic In My Head and Neti, Neti.

Anjum had a long session with the First Years where she talked about her work and about fiction-writing in general. She also read a few excerpts from Neti, Neti. The two hours went by so quickly that there was no time at the end for some of the questions that the students had for Anjum. So we sent her the questions by email and she very graciously answered each of them:

Hi Ramesh,

Here are my answers to your questions. I don't have all the answers, of course, not even most of them. But it's always fun to participate in any conversation about writing. Thanks for the opportunity!

Anjum

• FROM PADMINI NANDY MAZUMDER

a. Why don't you write your stories in the first person?

I don't usually use the first person; it helps to write in the third person to see your characters more objectively. Unless all your stories are about yourself (which they ideally should not be) I would recommend avoiding first person. Even if the story is about yourself, use third person to see how it sounds - there'll be lots of things that seem perfectly convincing in first person but silly in third person.

b. How much research goes into your characters? For instance, their jobs (Sophie's job as a “sub-titler” in Neti, Neti), the way their homes are decorated, etc.

It's not as much research as curiosity. As a writer, you're often dying to know what people's lives are like and if you can't imagine them, then you have to find out.

• FROM SHIVRAM SUJIR

When you develop characters like Sophie, you tend to get under their skin, you tend to "become" them. Does it take you very long then to cast them off and become yourself again?

I'm quite happy staying with characters, and when I finish with one I can't wait to get into the skin of another. I would get quite desperate if I had to spend all my time with myself!

• FROM SNEHA ABRAHAM

It's common knowledge that true writers are never satisfied with what they have written. How did you come to the conclusion that the material in your two novels was the best you could publish? Or, where did you draw the line and say, "That's it, this is what I'm going to publish"?

I think there is a creative dissatisfaction and a non-creative one. The creative one allows you to let go of one book but write the next one so you can test yourself all over again. The non-creative one makes you hold on to one text for too long. I think it's good to be dissatisfied and self-critical but not to the extent that it cripples you. Also the opinions of others - editors, writers, readers - do matter. So if they feel a book is ready to go, perhaps it is. But as writers we continue writing books because we're searching for that elusive perfection.

• FROM NAMRATA C.

a. Is there a discipline of writing and reading I have to develop every day if I want to be a writer?

Like I said at the talk, fiction writing is driven by passion and pleasure. Discipline comes afterwards. The only good reason to write is because you desperately want to. If this is your starting point, the discipline will follow. Yes it can be hard to switch on your computer and stare at a blank screen but that's the risk you have to take.

b. I have only recently taken up reading and I find it very difficult to write. I have problems writing simple news reports and features. Is there a solution?

I think reading is a great teacher. So do keep up with that even if it goes slowly. As for writing, practice and persistence. How about keeping a diary and recording your daily impressions and thoughts? Or writing down what you thought about a book. Or running a blog. Doing this more personal kind of writing might help you with other kinds. Also, when you're starting out don't be afraid to imitate. One learns through imitation and slowly develops one's own style.

c. Do you suggest any must-reads, e.g. Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, which will help me improve my style?

There are no must-reads, though the classics are classics because they've stood the test of time so you will only gain by reading them. But go with your instinct. If you liked one kind of book, maybe you could read more books in the same style/genre. Read reviews - you don't have to agree with everything a reviewer says but at least they'll give you some sense of what a book is about.

d. Any other suggestions you would like to give me to improve my reading and writing skills? Thank you for your time.

Don't be afraid of criticism - use it constructively. And writing is a process. If you write a little every day, eventually it'll all add up.

*

That’s excellent advice from Anjum, all of it. And we’re very grateful to her for making the time to come to Commits and for answering the students’ questions in such detail. 

When sources do not want their names to be revealed...

...here's one way to explain to the reader why you have agreed to grant them anonymity:

Markand Adhikari, the promoter of the television production house, Sri Adhikari Brothers Television Network Ltd, is launching a music and comedy channel called Mastiii with stand-up comedian Raju Srivastava as its brand ambassador. The channel, to be launched by the end of the month, will offer a mix of general entertainment (mostly comedy shows and spoofs) and music, said a media executive familiar with the matter who asked not to be named before a formal announcement is made.

This is from a Mint news feature by Anushree Chandran on the upcoming launch of a new television channel.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE
Also from Mint (July 3):

Rishad Premji has an MBA degree from Harvard Business School and joined Wipro on 18 July 2007 in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) business after working with GE Capital and Bain and Co. “He was very interested in the security vertical of our BFSI practice and was involved in a couple of key mergers and acquisitions activities, including the acquisition of Gallagher Financial Systems Inc. in the US,” said a senior official of the firm, who did not want to be identified given the way Wipro views succession. The executive added that Rishad Premji’s appearance in the annual report is one way to make him known to the larger shareholder community of the firm.

Read the article about Azim Premji's succession plan at Wipro here.

Journalism and 'the words of power'

More and more today, we journalists have become prisoners of the language of power.

Is this because we no longer care about linguistics? Is this because lap-tops 'correct'  our spelling, 'trim' our grammar so that our sentences so often turn out to be identical to those of our rulers? Is this why newspaper editorials today often sound like political speeches?

Let me show you what I mean.

Excerpt from an address by Robert Fisk, The Independent newspaper's Middle East correspondent, at the fifth Al Jazeera annual forum in Doha on May 23. Read the full text of the address here to understand why Fisk is making it clear that journalists should have no truck with "rulers", whoever they may be.

"Prepone" is now in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary

And to think of the number of times I have corrected students using "prepone" when they meant "brought forward" or "advanced"! Now they will throw the book at me.

This nugget of information came from V.R. Narayanaswami's recent column on the English language in Mint, titled "English, made in India".

Here's an excerpt:

Whenever a new edition of an English dictionary is released, people start commenting on the number of new Hindi words that have got into the lexicon. The 11th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary added 80 words from Hindi. “Prepone” has been accepted, and “slumlord” and “jai ho” are more recent candidates for entry.

More interesting to me are English words created in India or reshaped from existing words, and given new meanings. That reveals the versatility and adaptability of English words. After prepone, next in line might be “trifurcate”, which is what chief minister Mayawati wants to do with Uttar Pradesh.

Read the full column here.

When an email provides a tip-off

In a story in Mint on June 1 about a Godrej executive facing an embezzlement charge, the reporter Joel Rebello wrote about his source thus:

A Mint reader, who requested that his name be not used, provided information about the case in an email sent on Sunday. The fraud surfaced when the jewellers approached GCPL after Gaine couldn’t be reached in February, prompting the firm to seize his laptop and start an investigation, a company spokesperson said.

Read the full story here.

Two benefits of Twitter that I can think of

1. You get a maximum of 140 characters for your tweet, so you need to be brief and, at the same time, you have to be clear about what you are saying. Not very different from being a journalist? In any case, Twitter helps to sharpen your editing skills. Here's how:

A recent status message I posted on Facebook:

The next time you're at Subway, go for the Italian BMT — it really hits the spot! Leave out the "pickle" (as I did yesterday), add an extra dose of the jalapeno, and stick to the barbeque and honey-mustard sauces. Important: Ask for the honey-oat bread. Scrumptious!

I had to edit it down for Twitter:

Next time at Subway, go for the Italian BMT on honey-oat bread. No "pickle"; extra jalapeno; barbeque and honey-mustard sauces. Divine!

BTW, I didn't know what BMT stood for. Here's what I learned from Yahoo Answers:

The "B.M.T." sandwich at Subway was originally named after the "Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit." Consisting of sliced genoa salami, pepperoni, ham and your choice of salad, it has become one of the chain's most popular subs. With time, the sub's name has evolved to mean "Biggest, Meatiest, Tastiest."

2. As Neilima Bh. P. (Class of 2012) pointed out in a Facebook conversation recently, you get to "follow" celebs, experts, stars, even well-known journalists (though you have to hope that it's not some PR hacks tweeting on their clients' behalf) and read what they have to say about issues that interest them (and possibly us). I follow Rajdeep Sardesai, for instance, and his tweets bring me up to date on the major news events of the day. One of Rajdeep's tweets also led to my discovering the Indicast Podcast Network, in my opinion the best Indian website for podcasts. Media students will love IPN and our AVC students who need to produce a radio feature will get some ideas — check it out here.

• Satish Perumal (Class of 2011) adds: We think of Twitter and Facebook as networking tools which we use to keep in touch with friends and relatives. I, too, thought these networking sites were good only for having a... er, good time, an escape tunnel from the real world to the virtual one.
  
  But I did a rethink recently after a job interview with a social marketing company, Uncut Donut. The interviewer asked me for my Twitter ID and immediately scanned all my tweets, looked at my profile, and tried to get a fix on what kind of topics interest me. I was taken aback a bit by this turn of events and did not know how to react.
  
  Moral of the story: These networking sites might be fun, but these days they are a launch pad for the careers of many ambitious youngsters. And HR departments use them as recruitment tools too. So go ahead and get cracking with your networking!

How true, Satish. The best advice then for those using Twitter and Facebook would be this: When you apply for a job, you may be judged on the basis of your virtual life. So, mind your language. Think of interesting and intelligent status messages and tweets. And when you post pictures think about how these pictures may influence a potential employer. Sure, you may argue that your privacy settings will protect you, but what's to stop a "friend" from copying and forwarding content from your page? — RP

• Also read: "Facebook: Boon or bane?"
  

The World Cup of Kabaddi...

...and the top prize of Rs.1 crore was won by India, who beat Pakistan in Bathinda, Punjab, in early April. Open magazine (April 23) gives readers a racy description of the tournament and the finale, with Arindam Mukherjee capturing the festive atmosphere at the games and also conveying the seriousness with which hard-core fans view kabaddi:

This was no place for the faint of heart. This was Bathinda, in the heartland of Punjab, where the game of kabaddi captivates millions across generations. Here, in similar dust-choked pits, many a bone has been broken, nose bloodied, and ankle sprained in a game that combines judo, wrestling, grappling and athletics, all at once. Westerners have found it difficult to define the game, sometimes even calling it a ‘push-of-war’.

Hotels and dhabas across Punjab switched from IPL cricket to PTC Punjabi channel, which was airing the contests live. Badal even claimed that the kabaddi tournament had “left behind IPL cricket as far as TRP ratings in northern India, New Delhi, Canada, Britain, US, Italy, Pakistan and Iran are concerned”. That cannot be confirmed, but the cheers in Punjab grew audibly rowdier as India trumped Canada to make the finals, while Pakistan edged out Italy.

Read Gone in Thirty Seconds to get an idea of the frenzy the tournament evoked.

• Photo courtesy: Open

The editor of Mint is a fan of Modesty Blaise

And so am I. (And so is my wife.) Like R. Sukumar, who devoted his Cult Fiction column in Mint Lounge (May 15) to the character created by Peter O'Donnell, I have all 13 Modesty books (pictured).

Sukumar is a cerebral senior journalist who, in addition to editing Mint, also writes a serious column in the paper. And look at his qualifications: he has an MBA from Bharatidasan Institute of Management, Trichy, and an MSc in Mathematics and a BE in Chemical Engineering from BITS, Pilani.

When someone like Sukumar showers praise on the Modesty Blaise series, it really means something to fans.

Here's an excerpt from the column:

I like the Modesty books and comics for several reasons: They are very well written (better than some of Fleming’s weaker Bond books, although all the books have more action and humour than the latter; this may be one reason why the screenplays for the Bond movies had to be very different from the books); the characterisation, of Blaise and Garvin but also of the bad guys (and gals), is vivid and piquant; and the illustrations (in the case of the comics) are masterful.

Read the full article here.

A fascinating look at how the internet turned a 16-year-old into a pop phenom

Time (May 17) headlines Claire Suddath's article "Pop Star 2.0", a reference to Justin Bieber who is being hailed as "the first real teen idol of the digital age, a star whose fame can be attributed entirely to the Internet".

The intro draws you into the story before explaining how Bieber's manager first discovered him:

Late one night in 2007, Scooter Braun, an Atlanta-based promoter and music manager, was in bed surfing the Internet when he stumbled upon a grainy home video of Bieber belting out Aretha Franklin's "Respect." "It was such raw talent, my gut just went wild," Braun says, and then pauses. "Maybe I shouldn't tell people I watched videos of Justin Bieber in the middle of the night." Two weeks later, he flew Bieber and his mother to Atlanta and became his manager.

There is also a smart analysis of Bieber's appeal:

As a songwriter, Bieber specializes in two subjects: tender ballads about his parents' divorce and the kind of desperate puppy love to which anyone who has ever been a teenager can relate. His audience can be understood just by looking at his song titles: "U Smile," "First Dance," "One Less Lonely Girl." This is the brilliance of Bieber. Kids will listen to anything if it's catchy, especially if it makes them feel grownup, but Bieber's music says something they actually understand. Nobody is going to believe a 14-year-old boy when he sings, "You're my one love, my one heart, my one life for sure" — nobody, that is, except a 14-year-old girl.

And the longish concluding paragraph capitalises on that appeal:

The day after his appearance on SNL, Bieber gave a small concert at New York's Highline Ballroom for several hundred teenage girls, many of whom had waited for up to five hours to win tickets through a local radio station. The girls wore Bieber T-shirts, carried Bieber CDs and had Bieber backgrounds on their cell phones. "He's so sweet. He's not like every other guy who is just like, 'Ugh, whatever,' " says Alicia Isaacson, 13, from Long Island. It's a sentiment once professed for every artist from Shaun Cassidy to Paul McCartney. Every few seconds, a shrill cry of "Justin!" erupted from somewhere in the crowd. Security guards handed out water bottles and escorted those who felt faint or overwhelmed outside. Offstage, Bieber played with his baseball cap. "I'm really tired," he confessed. "Right now my schedule is just go, go, go. Sometimes I just want to sleep." That afternoon, he had cut his rehearsal to just half a song because he didn't have the energy. But signs of fatigue were gone now, and he took the stage with force. For the first few minutes, the only discernible sound was screaming.

Don't you want to know more about the only artist to have four hit songs before ever releasing an album?

• Photo courtesy: Time

Point your mouse to Poynter... and to Roy Peter Clark

Poynter claims it has "everything you need to be a better journalist". I believe it.

There are many things on the site that will be useful to you if you're looking to improve your writing and hone your journalistic skills. There are great tips for those interested in television too.

Poynter is also home to Roy Peter Clark, whose Writing Tools blog is, quite simply, superb. Here, for instance, are his tips for structuring your sentences and paragraphs:

Sentences and Paragraphs

1. Begin sentences with subjects and verbs, letting subordinate elements branch off to the right. Even a very long sentence can be clear and powerful when subject and verb make meaning early.
2. Use verbs in their strongest form, the simple present or past tense. Strong verbs create action, save words, and reveal the players. Beware of adverbs. Too often, they dilute the meaning of the verb or repeat it: "The building was completely destroyed."
3. Place strong words at the beginning of sentences and paragraphs, and at the end. The period acts as a stop sign. Any word next to the period plays jazz. 

Read the full post — If I Were a Carpenter: The Tools of the Writer — here. And make sure you keep going back to Roy Peter Clark and Writing Tools.

Clark is also the author of Three Little Words, which he wrote as a multi-part series for The St Petersburg Times in 1996. This is how the newspaper introduces Three Little Words on its website:

Author Roy Peter Clark worked for two years to piece together this intensely personal family history. The story, which unfolded here and on the pages of the St. Petersburg Times over 29 days, challenges us to reconsider our thoughts about marriage, privacy, public health and sexual identity.

It is a touching story about a journey of trust, betrayal, and redemption. Make time to read it. You will marvel at the writing style — this is what journalism is about. Read it here: "Three Little Words".

• Photo courtesy: Poynter 

UPDATE (June 15, 2013)
An e-mail from Roy Peter Clark
that I will always treasure:

From: Roy Peter Clark <roypc@poynter.org>
Date: Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 12:13 AM
To: Ramesh Prabhu <ramesh.prabhu@commits.edu.in>

Ramesh, thank you for your kind thoughts and your generous words.  I'm delighted that "Writing Tools" is working for you and your students.  And cheers to you on your own devotion to the craft.  -- Roy

--

Roy Peter Clark
Vice President and Senior Scholar
The Poynter Institute
801 Third Street South
St. Petersburg, Florida 33701
office:  727-553-4227
rclark@poynter.org

author of:
 "The Glamour of Grammar:  A Guide to the Mystery and Magic of Practical English"
 "Writing Tools:  50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer."

• Both the books mentioned above have been placed in the Commits library for the benefit of our students.

AND THERE'S MORE FROM
THE SCINTILLATING MIND
OF ROY PETER CLARK:

• A brilliant analysis of Roger Ebert's film review intros 

• "Want to develop story ideas? Try Facebook"

• A six-word motto for journalism

• Need a story idea?