Guruprasad Nagarajan's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
The new year and some thoughts on words
Hello, a quick post to say Happy New Year to all you guys. Hope you brought in 2014 with your friends and family and had fun while you were at it.
I spent my new year in a hill station near my hometown in South India, in Coonoor with my wife, in a magical, misty(cal) place called Tea Nest (should have been Tea Mist). Absolutely wonderful. There are places and experiences that defy description, that all the synonyms in the Thesaurus can’t do justice to; like the Blue Grotto in Capri, an evening in Taormina, sipping mountain tea by the seaside in Mykonos, trekking up the volcanic incline in Santorini, and a stay at Tea Nest. Ineffable, if that’s the word I’m looking for (to paraphrase P.G.W) comes pretty close to describing it.
Funny how much time and effort we spend trying to come up with the right word when the very words fail to describe a beautiful experience. Great sages and saints have been recorded to observe silence when facing some of the most important questions about the life, the universe and the meaning of life. Not because they were at a loss for words but because they knew the limitations of words. Yet, a clever turn of phrase here, a tongue in cheek pun there, makes most writers giddy with a sense of achievement. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, to quote Seinfeld out of context, for if we don’t know our own worth and indulge in a bit of self-congratulation, who will? But at the same time, we should keep in mind the limitation of words as well as their power. Wish you a happy new beginning again, and hope success finds us this year, however you define it.
I spent my new year in a hill station near my hometown in South India, in Coonoor with my wife, in a magical, misty(cal) place called Tea Nest (should have been Tea Mist). Absolutely wonderful. There are places and experiences that defy description, that all the synonyms in the Thesaurus can’t do justice to; like the Blue Grotto in Capri, an evening in Taormina, sipping mountain tea by the seaside in Mykonos, trekking up the volcanic incline in Santorini, and a stay at Tea Nest. Ineffable, if that’s the word I’m looking for (to paraphrase P.G.W) comes pretty close to describing it.
Funny how much time and effort we spend trying to come up with the right word when the very words fail to describe a beautiful experience. Great sages and saints have been recorded to observe silence when facing some of the most important questions about the life, the universe and the meaning of life. Not because they were at a loss for words but because they knew the limitations of words. Yet, a clever turn of phrase here, a tongue in cheek pun there, makes most writers giddy with a sense of achievement. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, to quote Seinfeld out of context, for if we don’t know our own worth and indulge in a bit of self-congratulation, who will? But at the same time, we should keep in mind the limitation of words as well as their power. Wish you a happy new beginning again, and hope success finds us this year, however you define it.
Zen and Lord Krishna
I purchased a kindle book the other day titled 'Dancing beyond thought'. It's a collection of verses from the Gita and the author's sincere belief is that one can take any of these verses and make chanting that a daily ritual. It's transliterated with English pronunciations along with the verses. Speaking of a verse that resonates, I always felt drawn to the instruction to 'do your duty without expecting results' (karmanye vadikharaste ...').
It allows you to focus your mind on what's at hand, not a distant victory whether it's the money that's going to be in your account or an award that you may or may not get someday. Since it un-clutters your mind, you can concentrate on the task at hand. It absolves you of the result, good or bad bestowing upon you a sense of peace and calm settle in you as you go about doing your duty, whatever that maybe.
There's a similar story in a Zen koan. An impatient student keen on learning kendo, a Japanese martial art(way of the Sword), approaches the sensei and asks him to teach the art of kendo. The master says it will take ten years. The student, appalled, says, 'But master, I have to learn it in five years'. 'Oh?' says the master, 'in that case, it will take twenty years'.
The lesson is: focus on what you have to do and the rest will take care of itself. In the case of the student, effort and single-minded attention would have ensured that he became adept at the art in ten years or less, but with his mind on the result, it was obviously going be delayed. The more impatient you are, the longer it will take.
Which somehow ties back to Stephen King's 'writers write' piece of advice. It doesn't matter if your book is published or not; whether you have a million readers or five. All that matters is that you sit at the computer and write. Because, like he says: “Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”
It doesn't have to be stories all the time. You can take a break between your novels and story writing schedule by writing blogs. Even if you write a bestseller, what next? Are you going to stop? Is that the best you got, to quote Ali (apparently that was how he taunted his opponents in the ring)? Not all bestsellers are great. Again, going back to King, he hates Snowfall in the cedar type stories; Tom Robbins loathes 'Fifty shades of grey'. So to write a decent book, you have to keep writing, and if you make it to the bestseller list, great, but that's just the beginning. As they said when I was learning Aikido very briefly, 'a black belt is not the end, it's the beginning'.
It allows you to focus your mind on what's at hand, not a distant victory whether it's the money that's going to be in your account or an award that you may or may not get someday. Since it un-clutters your mind, you can concentrate on the task at hand. It absolves you of the result, good or bad bestowing upon you a sense of peace and calm settle in you as you go about doing your duty, whatever that maybe.
There's a similar story in a Zen koan. An impatient student keen on learning kendo, a Japanese martial art(way of the Sword), approaches the sensei and asks him to teach the art of kendo. The master says it will take ten years. The student, appalled, says, 'But master, I have to learn it in five years'. 'Oh?' says the master, 'in that case, it will take twenty years'.
The lesson is: focus on what you have to do and the rest will take care of itself. In the case of the student, effort and single-minded attention would have ensured that he became adept at the art in ten years or less, but with his mind on the result, it was obviously going be delayed. The more impatient you are, the longer it will take.
Which somehow ties back to Stephen King's 'writers write' piece of advice. It doesn't matter if your book is published or not; whether you have a million readers or five. All that matters is that you sit at the computer and write. Because, like he says: “Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”
It doesn't have to be stories all the time. You can take a break between your novels and story writing schedule by writing blogs. Even if you write a bestseller, what next? Are you going to stop? Is that the best you got, to quote Ali (apparently that was how he taunted his opponents in the ring)? Not all bestsellers are great. Again, going back to King, he hates Snowfall in the cedar type stories; Tom Robbins loathes 'Fifty shades of grey'. So to write a decent book, you have to keep writing, and if you make it to the bestseller list, great, but that's just the beginning. As they said when I was learning Aikido very briefly, 'a black belt is not the end, it's the beginning'.
