Award!

My current work-in-progress novel wins City College New York's 'The Jerome Lowell DeJur Award in Creative Writing (Fiction)'. 

After feeling faintly stunned, I was happy. But I have to admit, my strongest feeling is one of relief: there might be light at the end of the tunnel yet. 

This novel has challenged me, and continues to do so, and the award lets me tell myself 'Say not the struggle naught availeth' ...

Some pics from the award ceremony :)

The Journey of a Story - my Writing Workshop

'Journey of a Story' starts 4/20, register now! #Workshop #writing http://bit.ly/21l2UMs 

Click this link to register:

http://ebiz.jccmanhattan.org/PersonifyEBusiness/Default.aspx?TabID=416&pid=642041298&_ga=1.78971924.1666974107.1412002606&utm_source=nyww&utm_medium=3_8_16_ConstantContact&utm_campaign=journey

The Art of Writing: Jo Dar Gaya So Mar Gaya

“You can always write because you can always take your pen and write subject verb object and write really simple sentences and actually they’ll get you where you need to go. 

The whole business of writing creates a lot of tension. And I find the backdrop of the ocean  wonderfully calming. There’s something out there, much bigger than you, than your book and it drops it all into a very welcome perspective.” 

- Hilary Mantel

Take baby steps, be kind to your writing self, and when overwhelmed, look at nature to regain balance. Or, like me, you might turn to Ghalib, that surefire purveyor of perspective: 

Raat din gardish mein hain saat aasmaan,

ho rahega kuchh na kuchh ghabraayain kya?

Through night and day the seven heavens are in revolution,

one thing or the other will occur - why get agitated therefore?

A Writer's Voice

What makes a writer - not plot, not characters, not language... It's Voice. Original voice. One that brings even dinosaurs to life:)

But what is Voice really?

Here's an illustration through the voices of Ghalib, Mir and Mohinder Singh Bedi, three Urdu poets. In this case, each is expressing his thoughts on a particular subject - neem-kash, neem-baaz, or half-open/dreamy eyes - which is often used in Urdu shayari with reference to love/the beloved's charm.

Mir un neem-baaz aankhon mein

saari masti sharaab kee si hai - Mir

Mir in those half-open eyes,

Resides the intoxication of wine

Koi mere dil se puchhe tere teer-e-neem kash ko,

ye khalish kahaan se hoti jo jigar ke paar hotaa - Ghalib

Were someone to ask me about your half-open eyes like a half-drawn arrow,

Would my heart be in such tumult if it were pierced

Hua jo teer-e-nazar neemkash to kya haasil,

Mazaa to jab hai, ke seene ke aar paar chale - Mohinder Singh Bedi

What if your half-open eyes are like a half-drawn arrow,

The pleasure indeed is in it piercing the heart

Voice then is a writer's world view articulated afresh in his writing!

Words

All my life I have loved words. Their sound. The way they roll off differently from different tongues. What they evoke. Lemon scent. Azure sky. Cloud tufts. My father's hands. Mustard fields. Thistles in my dog's fur. Lahore. Cities I have never seen. Places I have visited without stepping out of home. Foods I have tasted yet never eaten. Scones in childhood, caviar now.

And yet, words don't flow off my tongue - they flow off my fingers. I learnt this early on. When I tried to recreate the magic of words for myself, my tongue came short - it gobbled up words, garbled syntax, and came out all clumsy. Clearly, I wasn't mean for political office.

When writing waylaid me, it reconnected me once again to a pencil and a writing pad. Feeling like my childhood self I started to scribble, tentatively at first and then furiously, scared to stop until I'd emptied myself. It almost seemed atavistic, the way in which words seemed to have a forged a path from within me to paper with me as conduit. Not surprisingly, I found it entirely magical.

Those initial days I would approach my daily writing with trepidation: would the words come? Some days they did, just a trickle, at others a torrent. I wondered at my own inconsistency, at my inefficiency - 3 hours and 2 lines to show, my engineer-MBA self questioned.

But I stuck with the ritual and learnt to listen to its rhythm. I learnt to silence my inner critic and reconnect with that child. I learnt that writing was magical but that magic demanded patience, fortitude and a whole lot of stick-with-it-iveness.

Into my twelfth year of writing there is only one thing I can say with certainty: each writing day is new, when I have no idea of what it'll yield - a trickle or a flow; all I can do is show up at my desk and hope to be rewarded. 

What Is A Writer To Do?