Tag: Author Talks

It was the penultimate session of Anita’s Attic and over the course of the last eleven weeks, my writers had met an assortment of literary people. I saw their morale rise and fall; I saw energies flag and then revive; I heard doubts they voiced, the doubts they didn’t. I tried to hold their hand as much as I could but eventually I thought they needed to hear from someone who after a career of meeting deadlines now chose to make her own and motivate herself with the passion she felt for words and joy that filled her when she wrote.

Many writers of my generation cut our publishing tooth on a page called YOUTHINK in the Indian Express. I am not sure if it was the new Indian Express then. But apart from Harry Miller whom I worshiped, the only other name I knew in the newspaper was Aditi De. Soon as the person one sent off one’s heart and soul out to every few weeks, she became someone who could determine what your state of mind was like. Euphoria if a piece was accepted. Anxiety if one didn’t hear from her. Anguish if a rejection slip came my way.

Over the years Aditi and I met, and perhaps one of my true moments of accomplishment was when she interviewed me after my first novel The Better Man was published.

Aditi came. Aditi saw. Aditi conquered.

At the end of the session at Anita’s Attic, one of the writers described her as a rainbow. Thank you Rainbow De for putting a smile on my writers faces just before they went forth on their own.

Sometimes every writer aspiring to be an author needs a reality check.

Writers need to hear someone who doesn’t mince words about what it is really like. Writers need to travel with someone who from another world made an entry into the literary world. Writers need to learn from someone who manages to retain his passion for literature no matter what.

For the 8th session of Anita’s Attic, Harimohan Paravu, fast bowler, management mentor, and fine writer took the writers on a rollicking journey of what it means to be out there.

The pace of a crease, the heart break of bowling a full toss in the literary world and then going on to deliver a yorker to clean bowl his way into a movie deal.

“50 Not Out Book” by Harimohan Paravu Launch, with VVS Laxman

Long before everyone was talking about saving the girl child or the glass ceiling for women in the corporate space, Gita Aravamudan had started writing about everything women have to contend with.

And on the eve of International Women’s Day, who better to address the seventh session of Anita’s Attic than the gracious and always inspiring Gita Aravamudan on the twin streams of writing she handles with equal ease and adeptness – fiction and non fiction.

If you don’t find the book you are looking for, write it!

As we hit the half-way mark of the Season 1 at Anita’s Attic, I could see a curious fatigue set in. Writing a piece of fiction is a lot like running a marathon and unless one paces oneself, it is easy to feel defeated a little into the run.

The first flush of enthusiasm gives way to a flatness of thought and a falling of energy: why bother writing this book?

Which is when a writer like Pradeep Sebastian, bibliophile, columnist and a repository of knowledge about the printed word and its many dimensions is the right person to infuse the romance of books into writers who cant see the book for the blank page before them.

No writer is ever free of self doubt and especially when one has just begun writing, countless questions fill the mind.

More than anything else, writers need to hear that it is doable. And so the third session of Anita’s Attic had the brilliant Srinath Perur author of If it’s Monday, It Must Be Madurai speak to the writers on his journey from writer to published author.

As for my writers at the Creative Writing Program, with each week I see their enthusiasm for the program and their commitment to their project grow. Could a teacher or mentor ask for more?