If you attend the Jaipur Literature Festival—in whatever capacity, as author, journalist or star-struck reader—you expect to pick up lots of quotable quotes: Erudite, highbrow ones, certainly, but a few ear-popping ones too. I didn’t have to venture far this year. During a session I was moderating, the words came at me from just two feet away. The other people on the panel were saying them, and most of the audience was cheering in response.
The session was titled ‘The Craft of the Bestseller’ and here are two quotes—both of which are by suave, hugely-popular fiction writers—that I thought were particularly intriguing:
“Solitude distracts me.”
This was by Ravi Subramanian, author of a successful trilogy of thrillers about bankers and banking. It was a part-response to a question I had asked: Does the new generation of ‘mass-market’ authors follow the accepted wisdom that writing is essentially a solitary profession? Or do they see it as more of a communal endeavour?
(This story appears in the Mar-Apr 2016 issue of ForbesLife India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
I have read this statement (by Ravinder Singh) somewhere before, and was surprised! It sounds arrogant, \"I-am-perfect-and-I-don\'t-need-to-improve type. Every reader can not be a writer, but every writer should be a reader first. Reading definitely helps a writer to grow. Publishing now days is more about promotional strategy and marketing. \'Actors turning authors\' thing proves this. If the author is a celebrity, they don\'t even need to market the book. It\'s already a hit formula!
on Mar 24, 2016For a few centuries story tellers have been story tellers while writers have been recording the stories and ideas. Today's Speech-to-text technology changes that. We can record our grandfather telling stories at dinner and then see the words in text the next morning. Further editing of this work could make a good written story perhaps. I don't know. Perhaps these writers use such technologies to help them write books.
on Mar 24, 2016This was a question that Sidin Vadukut, an arguably \'mass-read\' author addressed quite well in another session. Esther Freud was quite stumped with all the Indian boys addressing all their questions to her, among them a lad who was an aspiring writer and wanted to know if he could \'write by feeling Nature\' (the question was some uncomfortable 2 minutes long). Freud like a lot of others there was taken aback at how a person could expect to become a good writer without reading. Sidin went on to elaborate and expressed how he felt the shortcomings of not being a great reader which resulted in a paucity of ideas and all. But that chap wasn\'t convinced. This trend is quite disturbing. I wonder if he would be allowed to think that he could handle accounts at a bank by \'feeling money\'
on Mar 23, 2016