tales of Suchita

Dear tales of Suchita,

It’s been two years since I started you without any plans and I am happy to report that streak continues still. I seem to bask in the glory of this unprepared creativity a lot but I am also happy to report that while I may not always be regaling you with my tales, I am regaling a word document with them.

You came into my life after the euphoria of a finished manuscript had not still died down and the world had seemed like my oyster. Little did that younger Suchita know what lay in store for her.

I am just so glad that I decided to start a blog. If nothing else, it keeps me in the habit of writing. I cannot begin to imagine what I would have done had I not explored this wondrous world of blogging. Not only has my craft improved with the constant writing and deleting and revising and improvising and writing, writing, writing, but I have also written some things which have frankly managed to amaze me!

Blogging of course comes with its own challenges, namely the below meme, but then nothing is perfect.

So in honour of the second blogiversary, here are 10 writing commandments I strive to live by:

• Discipline. Motivation and inspiration do not a writer make. With the amount of distractions and excuses around you, writing is a choice you make, everyday.

• It’s a job. So you show up at your desk or blank page and your muse will show up too – in many cases, you will find her waiting for you.

• Editing is next – maybe above – godliness. Strike down. This is the time you get to give vent to all your insecurities. Although when the impulse to trash everything strikes, wait a while. If the impulse remains, strike. If not, you’ll know what to do.

• Read. Anything, everything, good, bad, genius, guilty pleasure, quick reads, short stories, poems, essays, blog posts. Read.

• Read your writing aloud. That’s the best way to add tonal shifts, remove glitches, and give your prose a musical quality.

• Let an idea marinate for a time before you get down to writing it. Let your muse tell you the story. As Stephen King and Haruki Murakami said, no idea worth having will ever disappear.

• I have found writer’s block is more often than not your muse trying to communicate something with you. So instead of panicking, listen to what it is trying to say. As much as we’d like to believe, we aren’t always right.

• Something which I heard John Krasinski say (something that was given to him as advice), your job isn’t to say something funny, or sad. Your job is to say it right. And if it’s right, then the audience will either laugh or cry. Your job is not to worry about their reaction, but your delivery. (I’d suggest you see the full interview, but if you want to see just the part I’m talking about, fast forward to 1.05.10-1.06.31)

• Enjoy what you write. Write what works for you. If you’re interested, someone out there will also be interested.

• Don’t write to change the world. Write to change yourself, to understand something you don’t. To make sense of something that happened to you. If it has to change the world, it will.