Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Online Writer Mentor-ship

So you are stuck with a book. Or, you want to get stuck in a book? Read on..

You have had it with the living. You want to play in your head. Thats what your mom says, and she ain't no artist. What you want to do is to unload yourself into book.

These days I am guiding two of my creative writing workshop participants to write books. One is untitled, a mystery on the net. Other is a non-fiction, working titled 'Stories of Homeopathy'.

We meet online on skype, thrash out structures, twist the characters, stretch the creative licence to the horizon, make notes to be stuffed into chapters, and end the session with a truckload of work for the writers. I am trying to get them to 'read' their unwritten books out to me but that hasn't happened so far. I guess the muse takes its own sweet time to land on a head.

So if you are looking for a sounding board, contact me.

I invite all struggling writers to lay bare their woes.

I will listen, but you will write.

I will clear your mind off the cobwebs, but you will write.

Be very clear, I do not ghost write.

I can send you the ghost, but you will write.

Write to manjushree.abhinav@gmail.com with a synopsis of 300 words.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

when the muse writes with your pen

If I said I agreed with this poem, I would be out of business. So I am not telling but I cant not share it either.

So do you want to be a writer?
by Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.


if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.