If you find writing hard — if you have ever been put off writing — you must read this

Stephen Fry is the impossibly accomplished actor and writer who makes both acting and writing look easy.

Fry, who played the brainy Jeeves in the Jeeves & Wooster television series and who has also written some very funny books, says, however, that writing is hard work; he always heaves a sigh of relief when he has managed to meet a deadline. He also quotes Thomas Mann on the subject: “A writer,” said Mann, “is a person for whom writing is more difficult than for other people.”

Fry began writing seriously — poetry, stories, and novels — when he was about thirteen. But the novels were always abandoned, usually half way through the second chapter. Fry writes: "It took my friend Douglas Adams [author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] to encourage me to go further and he did this by pointing out that the reason I had never managed to finish a novel was that I had never properly understood how difficult, how ragingly and absurdly difficult, it is to do. 'It is almost impossibly hard,' he told me. 'It is supposed to be. But once you truly understand how difficult it is,' he added, with signature paradoxicality, 'it all becomes a lot easier.'"

Fry then offers encouragement to aspiring writers:

If any of you out there have ever been put off writing it might well be because you found it so insanely hard and therefore, like me, gave up and abandoned your masterworks early, regretfully assuming that you weren’t cut from the right cloth, that it must come more easily to true, natural-born writers. Perhaps you can start again now, in the knowledge that since the whole experience was so grindingly horrible you might be the real thing after all.

Of course finding it difficult and managing to complete are just the first stages. They are what earn you the uniform and the brass buttons, as it were. They don’t guarantee that what you complete is any good, or even readable. That is quite a different kettle of wax, a whole other ball of fish.

Read the instructive post in its entirety here: "Emerging into the Light".

• Time magazine commissioned Stephen Fry to go to Apple headquarters and write about the iPad back in April 2010 when the iPad was about to make its debut. Reading the article Fry turned in provides a unique insight into why Apple is today the world's most valuable company in the world by market capitalisation:

When I eventually got my hands on [an iPad], I discovered that one doesn't relate to it as a "tool"; the experience is closer to one's relationship with a person or an animal.

I know how weird that sounds. But consider for a moment. We are human beings; our first responses to anything are dominated not by calculations but by feelings. What Ive and his team understand is that if you have an object in your pocket or hand for hours every day, then your relationship with it is profound, human and emotional. Apple's success has been founded on consumer products that address this side of us: their products make users smile as they reach forward to manipulate, touch, fondle, slide, tweak, pinch, prod and stroke.

Read the cover story here.

The fraud that was "Sybil"

Who hasn't read or heard of "Sybil"? When I was in college back in Mumbai (this was in the late Seventies), the book had many avid fans who were apparently fascinated by this harrowing story of a young woman with 16 — that's right, 16 — different personalities.

There was also a 1976 drama film, based on the book, which starred Sally Field as "Sybil". It was aired that year as a made-for-television miniseries.

And there was a remake in 2007.


Two years later, in September 2009, Commitscion Madhura Chakravarty wrote a feature about the book in the college newspaper (see below).

Under the rubric "Books You Should've Read", Madhura discussed a few aspects of the book that made it a compelling read. "Sybil's ... dismantled identity is a result of severe mental and child sexual abuse by her schizophrenic mother," Madhura wrote. "... her narrow-minded, bigoted, religious family won't let her see a doctor."

And then Madhura paid tribute to author Flora Rheta Schreiber's skill in narrating Sybil's story: "...it is Schreiber's gripping style of narrative, complex plot, and exploration of human vulnerability that makes this book such a compelling read."

Little did Madhura, or I or anyone else for that matter, know that the whole "Sybil" tale was an elaborate fraud committed by three women: the psychiatrist who was treating "Sybil, "Sybil" herself, and a writer who appeared to be only too willing to believe everything she was told by the duo.

I was stunned at what I discovered in Sybil Exposed. If you have read or heard of "Sybil", you will be aghast, too.

• Want to know more? Read "Memory, lies and therapy (How three women fabricated the most famous case of multiple personality disorder and damaged thousands of lives)" by Laura Miller on Salon.

A poet-activist's horrific, first-person account of domestic violence

I don't know why some women continue to stay in an abusive relationship.

My advice to women, if they ask for it: If your man hits you even once, walk out. He is going to do it again. And again.

My advice to men, if they ask for it: Never ever raise your hand against a woman. No situation or circumstance can justify violence against women. I have no respect for wife- or girlfriend-beaters.

Why am I talking about this now? It's because I have just finished reading Meena Kandasamy's horrific tale — her own story — of domestic violence in the latest issue of Outlook.

Here's a chilling excerpt:

MEENA KANDASAMY

The first time he hits me, I remember I hit him back. Retaliation can work between well-matched rivals, but experience teaches me that a woman who weighs less than a hundred pounds should think of other options. It also teaches me other things. I learn that anything can become an instrument of punishment: twisted computer power-cords, leather belts, his bare hands that I once held with all the love in the world. His words sharpen his strikes. If I deliver a quick blow, your brains will spill out, he says. His every slap shatters me. Once, when he strangulates me, I imbibe the silence of a choked throat.

And when I tell him that I want to walk out of the marriage, he wishes me success in a career as a prostitute, asks me to specialise in fellating, advices me to use condoms. I shrink and shrivel and shout back and shed a steady stream of tears. He smiles at his success.

Kandasamy, a poet, writer, activist, and translator, walks out of the marriage ultimately and moves back to her parents' home in Chennai. But she suffers, and suffers terribly, because she is reluctant to call it quits. And why is she reluctant? She explains at the beginning of her article:

In the early days, his words win me back: I don’t have anything if I don’t have you. In this honeymoon period, every quarrel follows a predictable pattern: we make up, we make love, we move on. It becomes a bargain, a barter system. For the sake of survival, I surrender my space.

Read the article in its entirety here: "I singe the body electric".

• Photography courtesy: Outlook

• UPDATE (March 14, 2012): As I expected, Meena Kandasamy's heart-rending account of her violent marriage has drawn a flood of responses from readers. Read their comments here.

IT'S VERY DIFFICULT TO BREAK
THE CYCLE OF ABUSE

• My good friend and former Khaleej Times colleague Shagorika Easwar, editor of Desi News and CanadaBound Immigrant, commented via e-mail:

Brutal. We've done so many features on abuse and when we started, I used to wonder why the women took it. Why didn't they just get up and leave? And then, in telling their stories and speaking to victims, shelter workers and those who counsel abused women, I learned how very difficult it is to break the cycle of abuse. 

It follows a pattern, as though there were a manual for abusers. They isolate the women, make them feel worthless, abuse them and threaten them with worse if they dare to leave. There's the fear of not being accepted by one's own family. As one woman who has written a book on her own experience says, when a Western woman leaves a marriage, she leaves a man. When a South Asian woman leaves a marriage, she is often excommunicated by disapproving parents, siblings and the extended family for having stepped out of her role. I can't give you the name of the book as it is yet to be published, I read the manuscript as she wanted a blurb for the cover. But she describes the situation a majority of the victims find themselves in when she says the women who choose individual freedom over cultural practices are among the loneliest creatures in the world.

"WHEN KIDS ARE INVOLVED": If there are children involved, it's even more complicated. One women told me she was beaten viciously and often but took it because her husband threatened to keep the kids away from her if she left — she was a stay-at-home mom and with no money, felt she had little chances of being able to look after them on her anyway. One day, when her daughter screamed at her to leave before she got killed, she did go, but came back after sleeping for two days in her car. It broke my heart when she said she would have gone back to the same abuse if he hadn't changed the locks. 

Meena Kandasamy's experience is nightmarish. And yet, horrible as it sounds, she is one of the fortunate ones in that she managed to escape and her family welcomed her back, supported her. She could pour out her anguish in her writing. Countless others are silenced, pushed right back into their abusive homes. That's their lot in life, they are told, deal with it. 

"MEN GET BEATEN UP, TOO": After we did a cover on spousal abuse, I actually had someone call and say it was one-sided, that men get beaten up too. Of course they do. But not in such numbers, not in such horrific ways. But even if for the sake of argument we said they did, that still does not take away the women's rights to tell their stories. And the more I hear/read such stories, the more angry and frustrated I get. The more helpless I feel.

• ALSO READ: Journalist Nita Bhalla, who covers women's issues in South Asia for the BBC, recounts the lingering scars — physical and mental — from an assault on her and draws a wider lesson about violence against women in India: "Becoming an abuse statistic in patriarchal India".

About to begin your first job? Or first internship? Here are 20 tips:

On June 1 last year Atul Chitnis, one of India's best-known technologists, posted a list of 20 tips on Twitter for people starting their first job that day. He wrote on his blog some months later that the list was partly or fully re-posted all across the web, but "people keep asking me for a link to the tips. So I guess I should post them here on my own blog as well".

Of the 20 tips, here are my favourites:

• This is not school/college. You won’t lose marks because you don’t know something. You WILL if you don’t say so!
   
• Don’t be afraid of stating an opinion — be afraid of NOT stating one. You could be wrong, but won’t know if you don’t pipe up!
   
• Employers aren’t really looking for a bunch of yes-(wo)men. But they aren’t looking for a bunch of revolutionaries, either.
   
• Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, especially if you are young. You will thank me for this advice.
   
• Dare to look beyond your given assignment. “Good enough” never is. 

And I wholeheartedly endorse what Chitnis says at the end:

• While you may ignore all my tips for your first job — don’t ever skip breakfast.

I have lost count of the number of times I have told my students that they should NEVER give breakfast a miss.

If you're about to begin your first job — or your first internship even — you should read all 20 of Chitnis's tips and then attempt to put them into practice.

• Thanks to Commitscion Jalaja Ramanunni (Class of 2009) for the link. 

• UPDATE (June 20, 2013): Here's how to answer that near-universal job interview question: WHY SHOULD WE HIRE YOU?

"Mr Editor, your slips are showing!"

How does a film reviewer and national cultural editor of a leading newspaper react when he is accused — by a blogger, no less — of not knowing how to write in English?

If he is Mayank Shekhar of Hindustan Times, he waffles. Here's an excerpt from a Q&A with Shekhar on the Mumbai Boss website:

Have you have seen this (the critical blog post by Chetna Prakash)?
I’ve heard about it, not seen it. I’m flattered. This particular one I’ve glanced through because it was all over the place and guys in my team showed it to me, but it was a long time back. It comes with the job, especially because I’ve been a columnist and a critic so you have to take a stand, you can’t be sitting on the fence.

But her contention wasn’t that. It was that your English was incorrect.
Yeah, so when [my team] brought it to me, I explained to them what I meant and what this is and that’s very important because you don’t want your team thinking that you don’t know the language for god’s sake. There were a whole lot of things that were puns. Whole lot of stuff, which one could explain pretty easily.

So what did Chetna Prakash write actually? She took Shekhar to task for mangling the English language in his film reviews and she cited examples from his critiques of Peepli Live, We Are Family, and Kites. Study her blow-by-blow job here: The rise and rise of Mayank Shekhar: Or has Sarah Palin found her literary match?

Prakash also poses the question no journalist writing in English wants to be asked:

How can you be one of the most popular film reviewers of India, the national cultural editor of one of the country’s largest selling dailies, and a winner of the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism — when you have no concept of the English language, your primary tool of trade?

Whoa! That must have hurt. But if you're a senior English-newspaper journalist with a national readership, your writing skills better be up to par. Otherwise, you are just asking for it. As Mayank Shekhar did.

To give credit to Shekhar, though, his responses to questions about the influence of PR professionals on editorial content and about the vexed issue of plagiarism would resonate strongly with any good media professional, especially a journalist.

Here are his views on how to deal with plagiarism:

Would you fire someone whom you knew plagiarised something?
Would I fire someone if it was absolutely proven? Yes.

Has that happened?
In my current job, not a single case of proven plagiarism has been brought to my notice, for which I may have had to fire someone. Which isn’t to suggest that it doesn’t happen, surely it does, and perhaps is even rampant across the board, especially on the Internet, where all information is shared, and is rarely considered sacrosanct enough to merit credit, unfortunately. In my past jobs, whether I have directly fired anyone or not, I have come across instances where an entire interview has been made up and published, without the reporter ever having met or spoken to the person concerned. In such a circumstance, quite obviously, the said reporter has been asked to leave.

• The interview with Mayank Shekhar is part of a series on Mumbai Boss called "Editor's Notes". Read the Q&A with Open magazine's Manu Joseph here. Pay attention especially to Joseph's views on Open's code of ethics.

When furniture get nightmares

What is my television's worst fear? What might my sofa dread? And what is my centre table's worst nightmare?

These are the questions cartoonist Dan Piraro asked himself before setting out to answer them in his own unparalleled style:

Piraro, the creator of the syndicated newspaper cartoon Bizarro, explains on his blog the origins of this particular cartoon:

We’ve all felt sorry for a small chair as an extremely heavy person sits on it, and that empathy for inanimate objects was what led me to muse about things common household furniture might fear or dread. Of course, I know that inanimate objects are not sentient and have no feelings but by “chair,” I mean “child,” and who hasn’t felt sorry for a child being sat upon by a large adult? Perhaps my sensitivity in this area comes from personal experience; my parents were very poor when my siblings and I were young and could not afford furniture, so they sat on us. They couldn’t afford children, either, but until they figured out where we were coming from, they just kept having them. It was painful at times, yes, but it also brought us closer together as a family. 

How can you not admire a man whose genius for cartooning matches his flair for wit?

Take a look at some of the other Bizarro cartoons:

What does that last cartoon mean? Piraro explains, again tongue firmly in cheek:

One reader wrote to me this week asking me what this cartoon meant. If you are that reader, then you already know the answer because I responded promptly and politely, which is my habit. If you are not that reader and have wondered for yourself what this cartoon means, wonder no more for the next sentence will explain it. The devil likes bad things to happen to people so if someone came through surgery quite well, he would be disappointed by the “good” news.  If you are now wondering if I actually believe in the devil since I draw so many cartoons featuring him, the answer is yes, he is Karl Rove.

You will get this cartoon only if you are a huge comics fan — and have been one for a long time (Hint: That's Elmer Fudd fleeing for his life):

Visit Dan Piraro's website to get your regular dose of wry — make that bizarre — gags: "Bizarro Blog!".

Also read:

• When Dan Piraro made a mistake with a Che Guevara cartoon

• Telling it like it is... with cartoons

• One of our most famous cartoonists, Hemant Morparia, bemoans the decline (and possible early death) of the political cartoon in India. (Scroll down to read the item on Morparia.)

Do you find this magazine cover offensive?

Or do you think it is a clever way to tell a story about the merger of two major airline companies in the US?

When Bloomberg Businessweek used this composite image on the cover of its February 6 issue with the headline "Let's Get It On", it probably did not figure on the virulent reaction from some readers.

Here are some of the "negative" letters the magazine printed in the February 16 issue:

• Offensive … displeasing … distasteful … indecent … abominable … obscene … objectionable … that’s what I have to say about your Feb. 6-12 cover. You should be ashamed.

• I think you have a sharp magazine with good writing, making what is (for me) a boring subject — business — actually interesting and understandable. But I object to your Feb. 6-12 cover, the one with a Continental plane “getting it on” with a United plane. Couldn’t you have made a point about an airline merger without descending into base sexual imagery?

• Your Feb. 6-12 cover page was in extremely poor taste. You made it even worse with the headline “Let’s Get It On.” Surely you could have described the business events going on between Continental and United in a better fashion, and not by showing two planes having sex with each other on the cover of an important business magazine.

• Get It On, Love Built to Last, Friends with Benefits, Exchange Vows, Home Run: Your cover page is so subtle it should have a condom over the dominant top plane (should be United) and a diaphragm shield inside the tail of the submissive bottom one (should be Continental). You will lose several subscriptions over portraying the sacred marriage of two companies as just a long mile-high f – – k. Who was the genius who sent this around legal without thinking? For April 1, maybe, but not right after the holy days!

Of course, there was some positive reaction, too:

• Got to love last week’s cover: A Continental plane mounting a United plane with the caption, “Let’s Get It On”! On the same page, you talk about Facebook having “friends with benefits.” It shows that business has great humor. LMAO! Framing this cover. Thanks.

For the record, I did not even think this cover had anything to do with sexual imagery. One reason for that might be because I did not get the significance of the headline accompanying the image (did you?). "Let's Get It On" seemed to indicate to me that it was time to party, now that the world's largest airline had been formed. And without a second thought I turned the cover page and began reading the magazine. It's only when I read the letters in the February 16 issue that I did the mental equivalent of a double take.

You can read the other letters here: Feedback.

Also read: "Good ideas and good writing need to be backed up by good design".

The things that drive editors crazy

For some time now I have been visiting The Blood-Red Pencil, a blog that offers "sharp and pointed observations about good writing". The blog is run by 10 editors and writers whose goal, they say, is to help writers by blogging about what they know best: editing.

If you are a writer or an editor, or even a media student, you will find plenty of relevant and enlightening material here presented in an interesting way.

Take, for instance, a January 2010 post on the things that drive editors crazy. Author and freelance editor Maryann Miller gets straight to the point in her intro:

I’ve been editing for a long time and am still amazed at how often I see common mistakes repeated over and over again.

And then she gives us examples of the common mistakes:

Fred walked out, taking the file with him. You don’t need ‘with him’. If he took the file, it’s with him, DUH!! Or the sentence could be rewritten to make it a little more visual. Fred grabbed the file and walked out.

Those gray eyes of his stared right at her. This is an incredibly popular phraseology used in romance novels, and I wince every time I read it. As if he would be looking at her with anyone else’s eyes.

Sally shrugged her shoulders. What else would she shrug?

Harry nodded his head. As opposed to his elbow?

Sam found himself standing in the middle of… Was Sam lost? Much stronger to write: Sam stood in the middle of….

It was a picture of Madeline Smith, herself. Could it not just be a picture of Madeline Smith, period? Even my husband asked if the use of the reflexive pronoun was necessary, and he’s not an editor.

As I noted earlier, there's so much to learn here. Read the post in its entirety: "Things That Drive An Editor Crazy".

• The latest post, published today, on The Blood-Red Pencil is also, coincidentally, by Maryann Miller. Titled "Time Out for A Little Fun", the piece focuses on comic strips that, she says, feature jokes that connect loosely to writing and promoting. Read it here.

Your Facebook profile may be a fairly accurate reflection of how good you will be at your job

I have always known that companies have been checking out the Facebook profiles of prospective employees. Now here is confirmation of that fact in the form of a study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology last month.

Writing about the study on the Forbes magazine website, Kashmir Hill says that employers already know it’s a good idea to check job candidates’ Facebook pages "to make sure there aren’t any horrible red flags there".

She continues:

The reddest flags for most employers seem to be drugs, drinking, badmouthing former employers, and lying about one’s qualifications.

But there’s another good reason for checking out a candidate’s Facebook page before inviting them in for an interview: it may be a fairly accurate reflection of how good they’ll be at the job.

The Facebook page is the first interview, Hill writes, because if you don’t like a person there, you probably won’t like working with them.

Read the feature in its entirety here: "Facebook Can Tell You If A Person Is Worth Hiring".

• Also read: "Facebook: Boon or bane?" and "Yes, recruiters are using Facebook and Twitter to screen candidates".

Thou shalt follow these 10 commandments to be effective — and successful — at work

The best advice on workplace behaviour that I have ever read comes from Mary M. Mitchell, who heads an executive training consultancy, The Mitchell Organization. The company, which is based in Seattle, is dedicated to the credo that good manners create good relationships, and good relationships create good business.

MARY M. MITCHELL

Last month, Mitchell wrote a feature for Reuters, which was titled "The 10 Commandments of Business Behaviour".

Mitchell opens her article with an appropriate quote from the late American tycoon, John D. Rockefeller: "I will pay more for the ability to deal with people than any other skill under the sun."

And then she explains, while outlining her 10 Commandments, the impact your interpersonal skills have on your ability to do your job.

Here are Mitchell's 10 Commandments:

1. Thou shalt have a positive attitude.

2. Thou shalt be on time.

3. Thou shalt praise in public and criticise in private.

4. Thou shalt get names straight.

5. Thou shalt speak slowly and clearly on the telephone.

6. Thou shalt not use foul language.

7. Thou shalt dress appropriately.

8. Thou shalt take clear messages.

9. Thou shalt honour social courtesies at business functions.

10. Thou shalt be accountable.

The point about having a positive attitude (I have to say here that I have problems on this score sometimes) is deservingly No. 1. Everybody has bad days, Mitchell writes, but...

... nobody has the right to take it out on others. Rudeness, impoliteness, surliness, ugly moods, unprovoked displays of anger, and general unpleasantness can be costly to your career — and your company's bottom line.

I am glad, too, that Mitchell has made it clear with Commandment No. 6 that there is no place for foul language in the workplace. Back in January last year, I had written about this issue on The Reading Room (What is the need to turn the air blue?). Now, in her article, Mitchell points out that vulgarity, poor grammar, and use of slang are three of the top reasons people don't get hired. That should give many people out there, especially freshers on the threshold of employment, some serious pause for thought.

Mitchell also discusses another issue that I consider to be very important — dressing appropriately:

Don't enter your workplace without knowing its dress code. If you must, call the human resources department and ask. Good grooming is at least 10 times more important than making a fashion statement. Good taste and fashion are not always synonymous.

There's lots of good advice here. Read the article in its entirety — "The 10 Commandments of Business Behaviour" — and think hard about how you will apply these guidelines.