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.

"Yes man" redefined... and given a new sense of purpose

Find a way to say yes to things.

Say yes to invitations to a new country. Say yes to meeting new friends. Say yes to learning a new language, picking up a new sport. Yes is how you get your first job, and your next job. Yes is how you find your spouse, and even your kids.

Even if it's a bit edgy, a bit out of your comfort zone, saying yes means you will do something new, meet someone new, and make a difference in your life, and likely in others' lives as well. ...

Yes is a tiny word that can do big things. Say it often.

— Excerpt from the commencement speech made last month by Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt (pictured above) at the University of California at Berkeley

• Also read: Wisdom and inspiration from author Neil Gaiman's commencement speech at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and An uplifting commencement address by CNN-IBN's Sushasini Haidar.

A novel you will want to finish reading in one sitting

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO READ MY FACEBOOK STATUS UPDATE AND THE COMMENTS.

I first came upon The Devotion of Suspect X at the Crossword bookstore in Garuda Mall. I was intrigued by the tagline on the cover. "The Japanese Stieg Larsson" read the blurb from The Times.

When I next visited the Just Books library, a couple of days later, a quick search at the computer kiosk told me it was available, and I picked it up and began reading it as soon as I got home.

The last time I found a thriller "unputdownable" was a few years ago when I raced through Johnny Gone Down, by Karan Bajaj. Now I had found a worthy successor.

I returned Suspect X to Just Books after I was done but I wanted more people to read it, so I ordered a copy from Flipkart. My wife is reading it now — she is thoroughly captivated — and afterwards I'm going to place it in the Commits library so that my students can enjoy reading it.

I guarantee even non-readers will love this one.

• UPDATE: My young friend in the US, Ankita Maurya, wrote to say she doesn't really like the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. "Is this still a good book, even with the comparison with Larsson?" she wanted to know.
  
  "Ironically, Ankita," I replied, "this book is nothing like Larsson's books; that is why I found that Times blurb a bit of a mystery. I think what the reviewer meant was this book also is a cult favourite and a bestseller, just like the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the sequels. Go ahead and pick up Suspect X — you'll love it." 

• UPDATE (August 8, 2012): From the latest issue of Open: "At last, there is someone to satisfy an Agatha Christie aficionado’s longing for old school whodunits — Japanese author Keigo Higashino".

• UPDATE (March 18, 2013): Today, at breakfast, I began reading Salvation of a Saint, Higashino's follow-up to The Devotion of Suspect X. Now I can't wait to get home from work and be done with my gym workout so that I can sit down again with Salvation of a Saint.

• UPDATE (January 18, 2015):  Salvation of a Saint, featuring two of the main characters in Suspect X, turned out to be a page-turner too. So when another of my young friends, the Toronto-based Nasatassia Michael, told me that one more Higashino mystery had just been published in English, I immediately pre-ordered the book, Malice, on Amazon. I am glad to report that I was wowed by Malice. Once again, almost from the beginning, we know who has been murdered and by whom. And once again we keep turning the pages breathlessly, this time to try to learn why. With every Higashino book I read, my admiration for his writing skills grows exponentially. How on earth does he do it?

For a journalist's wife, trouble and strife

It can be exciting to be a journalist.

But to be a journalist's wife?

To have to wait up till all odd hours for your husband to return from work? To know that he can be called out on duty even in the midst of celebrations for your anniversary or for your child's birthday? To have to attend office get-togethers where all your husband's colleagues insist on talking shop and boring you to tears?

That can't be much fun. And it isn't.

I was reminded of what it means to be a journalist's wife (I can't speak for journalists' husbands) when I read Stephen Manuel's heart-felt tribute to "our better halves" on JournalismPakistan.com.

Steve, who was my colleague at the Khaleej Times in Dubai many years ago, and who is now the chief editor of JournalismPakistan.com, which he co-founded, begins his post on journalist's wives with a humorous reference to an incident narrated by another Khaleej Times colleague, Asif Ullah Khan, who hails from Jaipur and who is now the editor of Brunei Times. Steve then gets to the crux of the issue:

Looking back now I realise just how hard those times were for us that worked on the night shift at the Khaleej Times and just how much harder it must have been on our wives. I can certainly recall mine waiting up till 3.30 am for me, heating my "late dinner" and giving me a good cup of tea. She didn't have to, but she did.

Night duty is not easy on a journalist's family, Steve writes.

They [the wives] have to take the kids to school, get in household supplies, take care of the utility bills, cook, and even put up patiently with the office stories their husbands bring home.

Spare a thought for journalist's wives, is Steve's fervent plea.

Read the post in its entirety here: "Dedicated to our better halves".

UPDATE (July 30, 2016): Does it help if both partners are journalists? Perhaps it does. Read this piece by NDTV reporter Saurabh Gupta who fell in love with, and married, his colleague, Shivangi Shukla — Falling in love over a TV news bulletin.

When complaints from the public mean you must be doing something good

Those who work in the media have to know how to deal with complaints from the public. If you're a journalist, for instance, it feels good to have a reader (or viewer) writing in and commenting on what you have published (or aired), even if that comment is critical. You feel good because it means someone has read what you have written or watched your news show and taken it seriously enough to give you feedback. You don't have to get into a tizzy just because your work made someone angry. (You need to develop a thick skin early on, says CNN-IBN's Suhasini Haidar.) If the criticism is warranted, and there is an error in what you have reported, a correction may be in order. Otherwise, just read the e-mail and move on.

Would the same principle apply if you were a syndicated cartoonist? If you were Stephan Pastis, the creator of the laugh-out-loud Pearls Before Swine comic strip?

Judge for yourself from these excerpts taken from his introduction to a collection of Pearls strips, "The Sopratos":

Being a syndicated cartoonist means getting a lot of e-mail.

But the best of the best, the crème de la crème, are the complaints.

First, there are the just-plain-hate-filled folk, who load their e-mail with lots of exclamation points and keep hitting the “CAPS LOCK” button

“You think you’re funny, but you’re NOT!! You SUCK!!! Your comic has never made me laugh! Not even close! And you can’t draw worth SH*T!”

When I’m bored, I will sometimes send those people the following:

“Dear Pearls Fan, 

“Thank you for your kind words. Your support of Pearls is appreciated. Unfortunately, due to the overwhelming popularity of the strip, Mr. Pastis cannot respond to each and every one of his fans personally, but he’s glad to hear you enjoy the strip.”

More than not, that will trigger a follow-up e-mail. Those look like this:

“&$%@ you, you #&$@#*. I am NOT a fan of your @*&@ing comic. And DON’T SEND ME YOUR %#*#ing FORM E-MAILS.”

This of course means I have to send him the same response a second time.

Then there are the more specific folk. These people write when a particular strip or series of strips has angered them. Ohhh, there’ve been a few of these.

Off the top of my head, and in no particular order:

• Greek people (upset at being depicted as dirty restaurant owners)

• Parents of kids with ADD (angry at my saying they shouldn’t be drugged)

• Palestinians (angry at the Jerusalem bus strip)

• Bisexuals (furious that I called a lonely man who would date people of either sex a “desperasexual”)

• Family Circus fans (angry over any number of things I’ve done — depicting the kids as grown-up alcoholics, having Dolly say, “I love my dead grandpa,” or having the kids shelter Osama Bin Laden for a week)

• Family members of people suffering with Lou Gehrig’s disease (angry at Pig for saying how coincidental it was that a guy named Lou Gehrig died from something called “Lou Gehrig’s disease”.)

• George W. Bush supporters (mad that I had Rat writing him a letter saying that if he was going to bomb all 192 countries, he’d better pick up the pace)

• Homosexuals (mad that Rat called Pig a “fairy”)

• Baby Blues fans (deeply offended that I would show their favourite characters being babysat by Rat, above, who sat alone at their kitchen table doing tequila shots)

• Turkish people (apoplectic over my naming a llama “Ataturk”, a former leader of Turkey. This one even triggered a letter from the Turkish ambassador to the United States.)

• Nuns (angry that I referred to a nun getting an enema)

• Abraham Lincoln supporters (offended that I showed Lincoln saying, “I need to see another play like I need a hole in the head.”)

Add to these the more general never-ending complaints about having the characters swear, drink, smoke, and shoot guns, and it’s easy to see:

I’VE GOT THE GREATEST JOB IN THE WORLD.

Also read: "You won't believe how this popular comic strip artist gets his ideas".

Want to be a journalist? Rejection is good for the soul (and other advice from a media veteran)

Two minutes after I published a post today on Neil Gaiman's inspirational commencement address at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, I was alerted by Commitscion Neelima Bhamidipati (Class of 2012), via Twitter, to another uplifting commencement speech. Veteran CNN-IBN anchor Suhasini Haidar, who spoke to graduating students of WMA (World Media Academy) earlier this month, has posted her speech on her blog.

Haidar told the students she was rejected seven times when she applied for a job as a television journalist. Then, while explaining how rejection can be a boost for aspiring journalists, she listed her five wishes for young people seeking a career in journalism:

I am going to hope for you that each of you gets rejected for a job in exactly the same way because if you don’t understand what your passion is, it helps to have an interviewer that does. Because in the profession you have chosen, there will be many reasons to quit, and only one reason to stay — and that is the passion to tell a story.

1. I wish for you a really mean boss, one who makes you cry. Let’s be honest. This is a tough business, one where you have to push and bully your way to a story, you need to develop a thick skin early on.

2. I wish for you many, many days spent in the heat. So much of our job requires you to stand on someone else’s footpath, waiting for the person who lives inside to come out or go in; it’s a great thing to get used to.

3. I wish for you many unwell colleagues. That does sound horrid, but honestly, it’s how I got most of my early breaks. You get sent on an assignment only because someone else is indisposed.

4. I wish for you assignments in places where telephones and computers don’t work, because the joy of heading out to a remote area, where you work on one story for three days without having to report back, no hour-on-hour deadline pressure is something you must do.

5. I wish for you interviews with many eccentric quirky people… because those are the ones who will give you the story.

Read Suhasini Haidar's commencement address in its entirety on her blog: "Dear journalism students, I wish you many job rejections".

UPDATE (June 16, 2014): Earlier this month, Suhasini Haidar delivered the convocation address at the 9.9 School of Communication, where she asserted that good journalism can change you. Read the address in its entirety here.

• Also read: Wisdom and inspiration in Neil Gaiman's commencement address.

Wisdom and inspiration from Neil Gaiman

He is the multi-talented, multi-award-winning author of brilliant works such as The Sandman and The Graveyard Book. He is also a hero to many young people. And that is why the commencement speech Neil Gaiman gave earlier this month at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia is drawing raves on the Web.

I watched the speech on YouTube this morning after receiving the link from Commitscion Natasha Rego (Class of 2014). She wrote she found it to be "beautifully inspiring". I agree, and I think you will, too.

YOU LEARN BY MAKING MISTAKES: NEIL GAIMAN

While there are many thoughtful and thought-provoking aspects to what Gaiman said, what I found striking was that he got his start as a journalist:

I wanted to write comics and novels and stories and films, so I became a journalist, because journalists are allowed to ask questions, and to simply go and find out how the world works, and besides, to do those things I needed to write and to write well, and I was being paid to learn how to write economically, crisply, sometimes under adverse conditions, and on time.

Gaiman also makes a lot of sense when he speaks about learning from failure:

The problems of failure are problems of discouragement, of hopelessness, of hunger. You want everything to happen and you want it now, and things go wrong. My first book — a piece of journalism I had done for the money, and which had already bought me an electric typewriter  from the advance — should have been a bestseller. It should have paid me a lot of money. If the publisher hadn't gone into involuntary liquidation between the first print run selling out and the second printing, and before any royalties could be paid, it would have done.

And I shrugged, and I still had my electric typewriter and enough money to pay the rent for a couple of months, and I decided that I would do my best in future not to write books just for the money. If you didn't get the money, then you didn't have anything. If I did work I was proud of, and I didn't get the money, at least I'd have the work.

Every now and again, I forget that rule, and whenever I do, the universe kicks me hard and reminds me.

To plug into Neil Gaiman's very original philosophy and to understand why what he said is such a hit, watch the full commencement address yourself here.

If you would rather read up on the six key points of Gaiman's address, go here.

• Also read: Neil Gaiman talks to the New York Times about his favourite books, his reading habits, and other book-related matters: By the Book.

• Neil Gaiman is not the only journalist who has gone on to do other things in the media. Read A marketing whiz and the lessons she learned from journalism to know why good journalists make good media professionals.

• Also read: "Want to be a journalist? Rejection is good for the soul (and other advice from a media veteran)" — An uplifting commencement address by CNN-IBN's Suhasini Haidar.

Yes, there is an upside to being an introvert

It's commonplace to think that introverts have it tough. They appear to feel awkward in company, they prefer to stay silent in classrooms and at work, and, so, they risk being thought of as not very smart, not team players, not leadership material,

All downsides, right? So what is the upside? Is there an upside?

Yes, there is, writes Bryan Walsh in Time magazine.

Walsh, a self-confessed introvert, begins his article with a description of his experience at a diplomatic party in Tokyo. "Small talk with stiff-backed strangers at a swanky cocktail party is by far my least favourite part of my job," he writes. "Send me to a famine or a flood and I'm comfortable. A few rounds of the room at a social event, however, leave me exhausted. So now and then I retreat into the solitude of the bathroom, watching the minutes tick by until I've recovered enough to go back out there."

We then learn that, by some estimates, 30 per cent of all people fall on the introvert end of the temperament spectrum. But what does the label actually mean?

...introverted does not have to mean shy, though there is overlap. Shyness is a form of anxiety characterised by inhibited behaviour. It also implies a fear of social judgment that can be crippling. Shy people actively seek to avoid social situations, even ones they might want to take part in, because they may be inhibited by fear. Introverts shun social situations because, Greta Garbo-style, they simply want to be alone.

So being introverted can be very different from being shy. I didn't know that.

Walsh also discusses why simply being an introvert can feel taxing...

...especially in America, land of the loud and home of the talkative. From classrooms built around group learning to open-plan offices that encourage endless meetings, it sometimes seems that the quality of your work has less value than the volume of your voice.

That last sentence is sure to find resonance in many workplaces in India.

But Walsh's piece is about the upside of being an introvert so he goes to meet Susan Cain, author of the new book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, who tells him that there's indeed a subtle bias against introverts, "and it's generating a waste of talent and energy and happiness". It may be time, Walsh writes, for America [read "all of us"] to learn the forgotten rewards of sitting down and shutting up.

What, then, are the advantages of being an introvert? There are plenty — and you can read about them here: "The upside of being an introvert (and why extroverts are overrated)".

• Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Answer these 12 questions to find out: "Quiet Quiz".

• Also read: Society rewards extroverts, says author Susan Cain, but quiet types have a hidden strength all their own. Read her essay here: Don’t Call Introverted Children ‘Shy’.

• Also read: A former CEO who uses his shyness to forge close relationships and build trust with employees now often stands in front of a roomful of people and tells them how they, too, can be leaders. His advice: "Introverts can be leaders too".

• Photo illustration: Zachary Scott, courtesy Time

• UPDATE (July 31, 2013): On Huffington Post, "Six of the most common false assumptions about introverts — and why they're wrong".

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.