Putting pen to paper

March 13, 2015 05:23 pm | Updated 05:23 pm IST

It’s a book that has been about four decades, and much hype, in the making. Touted to be a tell-all about the gory underbelly of Indian publishing, A Scrapbook of Memories by Ashok Chopra, just out from HarperCollins, dwells deep on the scandals, sex lives and sordid dealings of authors such as Khushwant Singh, poet Dom Moraes, Shobhaa De, Dominique Lapierre and a dozen others. As tiresome as the repetitive themes often are, in occasional spurts of insight, Scrapbook offers what few other books about Indian authors have—a peep into the ways our writers write.

The Internet overflows with wisdom about international authors’ writing rituals. It’s the stuff of urban myth now that Friedrich Schiller wrote with rotten apples in his desk, for the stench fuelled his creativity; that John Steinbeck wrote only with 12 sharpened pencils at his side so he never had to move in case one turned blunt; and that Virginia Woolf wrote on her feet to supposedly compete with her sister who painted standing at an easel. With Scrapbook , we now know curious pieces of information, such as Khushwant Singh always wrote with his feet propped up and his paper on his knees, constantly chewing paan; or that Ismat Chughtai penned her short stories with a green ‘Ladies Parker’ fountain pen that Saadat Hasan Manto had gifted her, always seated on a mattress with her left hand playing with a pack of cards and her right hand writing.

Another writer who famously wrote with cards beside her was Maya Angelou. It kept her “Little Mind” occupied, while her “Big Mind” was free to delve sharp into her writing, she once told The Daily Beast . And that’s the broad purpose behind most writing rituals, Indian or otherwise, one finds — to force your mind into a place that spurs your best words. For some, that answer lies in setting a rhythm each day that their minds ease into: Ernest Hemingway wrote every morning “just after the first light”, and Woolf wrote for two-and-a-half hours every morning after which she read. For others it’s about pushing their bodies into particular rhythms that then lead to better thought — a pairing, if you like, of physical struggle with mental rigour. So there’s Kurt Vonnegut who did push-ups and sit-ups in between sentences, Hans Christian Andersen who took hour-long walks before and after writing, and A.J. Jacobs who writes while walking on a treadmill.

The repetitiveness of physical exercise, they say, numbs your mind into a meditative state of absolute clarity, and then the words just flow.

With an almost global obsession about running in our times, what this ‘physicality of writing’ has led to, is a new breed of writer-runners — TheNew Yorker ’s Susan Orlean and Kathryn Schulz, for example, Joyce Carol Oates, and the poster boy of them all, Haruki Murakami. In his beautiful memoir What I Talk about When I Talk about Running , which is part running diary, part reflections on a life in writing, Murakami states, “Most of what I know about writing, I’ve learned through running every day.” He compares the discipline of lacing up his shoes every morning, and the endurance and focus of long distance running, to the effort and will it takes to sit concentrated for long hours at a desk, writing.

When that well of talent hits rock bottom, it is these—discipline, focus and endurance—that will carry you through, he advises.

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