This new world of ebooks

I have been publishing ebooks for almost a year and the first thing I realised is that most people don’t even know what ebooks are. I am talking of India and a very modern city like Mumbai.

They say, I would love to read your book but I don’t have a kindle.

Do  you have a smart phone, I ask them.

They do have a smart phone but hold it out helplessly, totally unaware of what to do with it. To make an account and download an ebook is almost beyond their capacities. They ask sons or grand daughters to do it.

Or just shrug because its too complicated to contemplate.

I can understand most people being unaware of the online world, but this applies not just to the usual person who uses an expensive smart phone for nothing but making calls to their children abroad – it applies to other writers as well.

It will take time, especially for writers who have been around for a while but ultimately, they will have to deal with this strange and confusing new world. Their old world is dying. Bookshops are closing. The single narrow and crowded road which lead to a publisher contract is getting lost amid the brand new highways which are opening up for writers. Yes, you can ignore it – but it won’t go away.

In my book club the word ‘book’ still means the print variety. Now, however, a few Kindles have appeared. Most readers still order their print copies online or search the few remaining – and shrinking – bookstores.

I don’t like reading an ebook, its very uncomfortable, some of them say. I like reading a real book.

They are probably hunched in front of a computer unaware that the easiest way to read is an ereader. Or even a smart phone or tablet. No use telling them about it.

It seems that, for most people, the very vast and rapidly overwhelming online ebookstores are invisible. For them its still the few shelves crammed between colouring and children’s books. That space grows smaller as chocolates and gadgets grab the shelves once devoted to shiny new bestsellers.

I have news for all those people.

Ebooks is a one way street. Once you start reading ebooks you are not going back. Once you start writing ebooks, you may add print books or even publisher books, but it will always be ebooks. Like most technological advances it goes only one way.

I am lucky to be here so early when the whale has not turned – though that is due – so I can get a ringside seat as the seasons of writing and publishing change. With one difference. The old ways will not be coming back.

One world will shrink and shrink until its a pale ghost of what it was. The other will expand exponentially until it grows so overwhelmingly huge that it just can’t be ignored. I leave it to you to guess which is which.

Self publishing in India

Now that self-publishing has arrived on Indian shores and now that a few Indian authors are taking that route, I see some coverage in the media. But most of the time the media calls it ‘vanity publishing.’

Self-publishing is not vanity publishing.

The two things are poles apart, one is a derogatory term and the other is a legitimate avenue open to writers today.

Several years ago when I was looking for a publisher, I met all kinds. It took me frustrating years of writing query letters and waiting months for answers. I had very little idea of what I was doing so some of the publishers whom I approached unawares would have fit the ‘vanity publisher’ label. What I mean by that is they asked me to fund the publishing.

It’s done in many ways. They tell you that they will do you a massive favor and make you a partner so you can reap more benefits. Run in the other direction. It’s just vanity publishing. They will charge you enough to make a profit and publish the book and forget about it. You will end up with a dusty pile in one corner of your room and not much else.

Others ask for a ‘buy back’. You buy back a certain percentage of the books at a discount. Usually a large percentage of the first print run, like 40%. Once again the money is coming from you, the author and once again, you are left with a dusty unsaleable pile of books.

Vanity publishers don’t need to sell any books and many won’t even try. After all they have already made their profit from the author. Not only is it your work and effort but it’s your money too. You get the satisfaction of calling yourself an author, the ‘vanity’ of it. That is all you get.

Self-publishing is not a scam designed to take gullible authors for a ride; it is a real publishing opportunity. The author does all the work. You get the manuscript written and thoroughly edited. You make a cover, but you do not pay to publish it. You upload your precious book for free and when someone buys a copy you get the major share of the profit.

The site which hosts your book, like Amazon Kindle direct or Smashwords function like a marketplace. It does not ask what you bring to market. If its good quality it will sell, if its bad quality it will sink, but there is room for all kinds.

It’s a new and exciting opportunity, giving authors, for the first time, control of the whole process and a very decent share of the profits.

Nothing vanity about it at all.

What I like about Flash Fiction

For a while now I have been writing flash fiction. FF is very short fiction, though the length may vary. It ranges from six word stories, to the 100 word drabble, to shorts of 250 or 500 words, all the way up to 1000 words. Loosely it’s all flash fiction.

Short stories start at 1000 or 1500 and go up to 10,000 or so. Beyond that it’s a novella and after 40,000 it’s a novel.

It’s the short length of a flash which makes it both easy and difficult.

The easy part is the first draft, a quick scribble which takes very little time. Rewriting it, polishing it, making it a good story – that is the difficult part.

Anything does not go. A short description or an anecdote is not flash fiction. There has to be a story, progression, conflict and some kind of resolution. Usually two characters which can be stretched to three. More than that would overload the tiny form.

It’s not easy to write, a mistake those who have not tried the form often make. Poetry is short too and no one thinks it easy. Neither is flash. Writing a good flash has a steep learning curve and takes a long time – years of work, like everything else in writing.

The length I like is 1000 words maximum. It’s roomy enough for a little character development, a little – very little- backstory – and a surprise or a twist to bring it to a satisfying ending.

Ironically the shortness of the form gives it the largest scope to experiment and innovate. Because it is so short you can try all genres and various styles. It is refreshing to try things you can never do in the novel or short story you are working on.

The real delight is the experimentation. You never quite know what will show up on the page and often you are very pleasantly surprised. Because it’s so short you can write hundreds of stories. Most will be rubbish but there will some gems in the debris which you can rescue and polish later.

Every story helps. I suggest to those who are starting out – write, write and write. After your first five hundred, or your first thousand – something will change. You will discover you have grown and so have your stories. Just like riding a bicycle. One day it’s effortless, but that day comes only after many hours spent despairing, thinking you will never get it, picking yourself up, once again, from the dust.

Why do you write?

A friend asked a question, why do you write?

I thought about it and I had no answer. Why do I write?  I have been writing all my life – but why?

It is not a profession which leads an obese bank account.

Most writers do not make a living at writing. To survive you need other work which will pay the bills. Writing is usually a balancing act, caught in the cracks between work and family commitments. Writers must take whatever moments they can, steal time to write, cutting out other pleasures to squeeze a little more writing time from an almost empty tube.

Most writers would love to write full time – but they need to eat. Writing rarely makes any money. Poetry is notorious for that – poetry and money just don’t live in the same town.

Does that ever stop poets from writing? Of course not.

So what is it? Success?

Very few writers achieve success. Their readers are usually their writing friends and writing group members. Writers can struggle for decades without getting anywhere.

In the days of traditional publishing many writers never got published. In today’s age of self publishing you will get published and then just disappear in the flood of other books.

Very few writers achieve fame and fortune. But that has never stopped anyone from writing.

So what is it? What keeps you going, year after year, alone, doubting yourself, struggling with the knives and daggers of rejection, wounded over and over and yet picking yourself up from the gutter again and again. Reinventing yourself when all doors seem to be shut. Loosing yourself in another story while the old ones molder unread.

How do you last in this field – that is a mystery – but you do.

You grow two skins. One is tender and sweet, with the poet’s sensitivity and the openness to the flow of words. The other is tougher than rhinoceros hide – that you need that when the rejections begin. Make no mistake, you will always need the rhinoceros hide – even success cannot insulate you.

Would you last as a writer if you knew what was to come? New writers are blissful in their ignorance and older battered writers usually avoid saying anything. What can you say which will not discourage them so greatly that they will go and wait on tables instead?

So why do you write?

Why?

You do not write for the externals, for the gains. It is something internal. The act of writing itself.

You don’t write for readers. That comes later and who knows whether you will have any readers or not. You can hope but you cannot be sure. Even successful writers are not sure. I have often heard them say that a book they thought would be a great success flopped and another, written in a spare thoughtless moment, somehow caught the reader’s imagination.

So you do not write for readers.

You write to write.

Something magical happens when you write and especially when you write poetry or fiction. You connect to the creative part of you, what you might call the Muse.

It opens a universe. It takes you out of yourself. It fills you with magic quite unknown in this prosaic, unimaginative world. For that magnificence what will you not do?  Everything else is dwarfed by those starry moments.

So perhaps, that is the answer to why you write.

You write for companionship – your own.

You write to meet yourself at the deepest and most profound level. The ancients called it ‘yoga’ – union with yourself.

You write because without words to express it, the world is brittle and prickly and almost unlivable.

You write to survive and you write to become.

Most of all, you write because it gives you wings.

 …

Thank you to Bhavani Ramesh whose question started this train of thought.

The Journey of a Book

Books get published and books get lost amid the thousands which are printed every year. Too many titles and too little shelf space. When my book was first published I rarely saw it on the shelves. Bookshops did not reorder. Some did not even take orders.

Like many books it was invisible, the book I had taken five years to research and write and almost as much to get published. Once in print it just disappeared. Sales were good. One or two bookshops  – especially Strand – stocked it and sold it and re-ordered it often. So, if it was selling, where was it?

Three years after publication I found out. Here, in the very first table of Kitab Khana, a friendly and cheerful Mumbai bookshop. Here it is, right at the entrance, on that important first table.

I wanted to see this – I guess every author does – and now I have.

Once a book leaves home for a publisher its like a bird taking flight – you have no idea where it will land – or crash – or go into oblivion. Or sometimes, reappear.

Just goes to show that everything takes its time and every dog has its day.

This one was a really delightful day, and in some sense came full circle, since I am planning to begin another book next week.

Finding that Quiet Writing Space

Writing books often advise writers to find a quiet space to write, a silent house before dawn or after midnight, a favorite chair where you can write undisturbed, a chair to sit in the back of a café, or any other place where you can focus on your writing. Some writers go to great lengths to create a writing space and decorate it with books and pens and notepads and dictionaries.

Other writers think of a poem while crossing a busy road, or write in the still centre of the whirlpool of small children, or in the middle of a bustling, noisy, intrusive mall.

Then there are writers who complain, how can I write when there is so much noise and so many interruptions? I just can’t concentrate. I need a quiet place, that’s what I need. And they spend years looking for that silent spot and never find one. How can they find it?

Places are not quiet, you are.

Silence or thunderstorms are in your mind and not in those places. Words cannot flow when the mind is a spiraling swirl of anger and frustration, when thoughts circle round and round with the fierceness of birds of prey. What room does that leave for writing?

Quietude of mind is what you carry with you wherever you go, in the midst of the million passerbys of a city, on a crowded bus or train, or in a room full of loud voices.

The cities can be full but you must be empty.

The rooms can be occupied but you must be vacant.

The skies may be cloudy but yours must be an endless blue.

How can you write if your mind is one dark fog of rolling despair? How can you write when your stormy weather leaves not a crack for a ray of light? When your mind is full, the loneliest mountain will do nothing for you. All you will do is worry on the mountain and no words will grace your empty pages.

The only writing space a writer needs is within, in the quietude of mind, when you let the world go, and let the dark clouds drift away, and let your thoughts settle, slowly, like ripples on a pond. Slowly, the water becomes clear, slowly and silently, the water reflects the sky.

In that quiet place, inspiration comes. In the silence, poetry writes itself. In the openness, a flurry of writing pushes to be heard, to come out of the dark into the white. And there it is, your quiet place, right there in the middle of life, in the middle of the hustle and stress, in the middle of the war field of the world.

There are no quiet places for writers. You just have to make your own.

Those who don’t read

The one thing you discover when you publish a book is all the people who don’t read. When I used to walk a dog on Marine Drive I discovered how many men bark at dogs and it’s a similar thing. They look you in the eye and throw down a challenge. “Haven’t read a book since the day I left college,” they say proudly, expecting a medal. Then they see your face and condescend a little so as not to hurt an author’s delicate feelings. “But I will read your book, give me a copy.”

Then I have to explain, in whatever way I can, that I have no copies. (the six I received  have long been distributed and I am hanging on to one by the skin of my teeth and my sister is hanging on to another and growls at anyone who comes near) I tell them that lowly authors don’t have a wealth of copies to give out and suggest a bookstore.

At that point they draw back. I see alarm and suspicion in their faces. I go ahead and tell them the name of the nearest bookstore.

“Where is it?” They ask, even if it’s just down the road.

I know what they are thinking. They are wondering if it is safe to do such a strange thing as wander into an unknown bookshop. I have seen them scurry by on the farthest side of the pavement, with furtive looks over their shoulder as they pass.

I try to make it easier. “If you call them they will deliver the book to you,” I say. Immediately I wish I had not said that

“Give me the phone number,” they demand as if I carry it in my pocket. When I admit I do not know the number I know I have lost all credibility.

First, I should have given them a book free from the enormous stack at my elbow. Second, I should not have been so crude as to expect decent people like them to step into a place like a bookstore and now, I don’t even carry the phone number handy. So I promptly put my foot further into it by suggesting they look up the phone mumber on the web. By then they are herding their children and hunting for the exit.

I once heard a conversation in a bookstore when I was browsing the shelves.

A young voice, speaking right behind the tall racks. “Hi, mom, you will never guess where I am?  No, no, I am not with a boy, I am at a bookshop. What? No, a bookshop, you know where they sell books. Books. Yes, like that. Yes, of course, I am okay, I came with a friend. No, mom, I promise I have never come here before. It just happened. What? No, she just went to look for a book. Don’t worry, mom, I am really fine. I promise I won’t stay long. I will be home soon. Bye.”

Peering through the books I saw two receding figures both wearing the anonymous teenage uniform of blue jeans and tight black T‑shirt.  A few minutes later they walked out, no doubt with a sigh of relief. I wonder if her anxious mother kept calling, “Have you left yet? Are you okay?”

Then there are those who, when they hear you are writing a book, look you straight in the eye and ask bluntly, “What for?”  I don’t know the answer to that one. I wonder if anyone knows. I learned the hard way that it is not an existential question requiring philosophical quotes from the Bhagvad Gita. They are talking about something far more mundane.

I finally figured out that they did not mean, what for, they meant, how much, as in “How much did you pay to publish it? Does it make good money?” and unless you want them to cut you out of their lives completely never tell them how much an author earns.

And then there is always that earnest woman who leans forward and says confidentially, “I don’t read. Why don’t you just tell me what it is about? Just tell me the important parts.” When I avoid that one she says, “Well, if you lend it to me, I will look at it. As I said I don’t read.”

When I refuse she says she will get a copy of her own, in a very weary tone, obviously thinking that I will suffer terribly bad karma for this sordid breach of generosity. Then she has a better idea and delivers it by sidling close, lowering her voice and asking me to do her a favour. “You know I don’t read,” she says for the third time, “Can you mark out all the important parts?”

That is not the worst. I met the worst, a writers nightmare, on a bright sunny morning in a bookstore café. I had just ordered coffee and she came and sat by me unasked and showed me a book which was fortunately not my own.

She had made notes in the margins and underlined paragraphs, and folded corners. There was a coffee stain on the cover and the edges looked as if a rat had nibbled at them.

“I love this book,” she said, and proceeded to read me her notes. “I come here every week and sit at this table and read it and make my comments. What was the name of your book again?”

I did not tell her. Fortunately she had not waited for an answer.

We left together, walking past the long shelves. Then I found she was not beside me and turned to look. She was bending over the bottom shelf, slipping that favourite book right into the corner, behind a few others.

“There,” she said, “Its quite safe till I come back next week.”  With a satisfied smile she headed for the door.

Poems in the Attic

Writerly Places 5: Poems in the Attic

There is something about attics especially when, like this one a little outside Simla, all you can see is cedar and teak forest, range after range in all directions. At dusk the shadows encroach slowly creeping up the tree line. At dawn, the highest branches sparkle in the sun while the rest of the forest still slumbers in pine green darkness.

It’s a great place to write and think and drink coffee and use up notebook pages. Poems, sketches, story ideas.

Up there at the top of the world with forest below and nothing but sky and words around.

The Great Divide

It runs right through the center of the literature, a deep abyss of unfathomable depth and no real way across.

On one shore is the literary – smooth, flowing, atmospheric, at its best the highly nuanced language of poetry.

On the other side are the genres, so many of them, un-put-downable, intricately plotted roller coasters, rich with story lines and ideas.

The two rarely meet, of course, but worse they stand on their respective sides and jeer at each other.

I have heard literary writers say the word ‘plot’ with a sneer, throwing out the word like a missile. I have also heard mystery writers say with scorn that the literary tribe cannot do what they do and are eaten up with the envy of bestselling numbers.

The truth is in the middle, as usual.

Neither side can do what the other can and there is a reason for this. That is how the brain is made. It has a left side and a right side and somehow literature has shifted far left or right, building no bridges across the chasm.

When you write in left brain mode, plot is easy. You can easily juggle intricate subplots but with little attention to rich language, characterization or imagery.

The right brain does the opposite. When you write from that side, your words are vivid and flowing. It’s easy to get inside the character and do stream of consciousness – but plot is hard.

So do we try to bridge the gap? No, we move further left or right.

Literary writers try to evict plot, as if that can be done. It’s like throwing out not just the baby but the whole city. When I was in college, studying literature, plot was considered a very nasty worm which had crept insidiously into the apple. You could not get it out, so everyone was trying to shave it to a hair, trying to be absurdist, modern, gritty realistic and often monotonously depressing.

Since then some plot has crept back in, thanks, perhaps to the bestseller novels and blockbuster movies.

On the other side, the writers who write complex plotted stories often complain that writing is chore and they do not enjoy it all and simply want to finish the job as fast as possible. The left brain is the result oriented brain. It cannot stop to smell the roses, it likes bullet train speed to the last page, is intolerant of mistakes and just wants the job done even if it is pitted with a few holes and awkward sentences.

Joy, delight is on the other side, in the domain of poets. On the side of the right brain. No one ever pays poets anything so it’s clear from the start that if you are writing poetry, the word money is absent from that dictionary. You write for the joy of writing, for that silken right brain flowing when the world slows down and you are lost in ink.

So why isn’t there bridge across the abyss?

It can be done. Great writers have done it and shown the way.

I think it’s in the mechanics of it.

First let the left brain do its job. Plot, outline, notes or whatever else you use. Create the structure.

Then – the first draft. Here, the right brain takes over. Forget the rules of grammar and turn off the perfectionist in your head. Just write, whatever comes with no corrections and no going back. Don’t think about it or try to correct it. Just write.

Then the left brain again, in editorial mode, coming back to edit, correct, polish and perfect.

Of course, that assumes that right brain writers will study plot and left brain writers will take the time to get into the flow. It can be done. It’s not easy. But it can be done.

Perhaps one day there will be a Laxman Jhula over the bottomless chasm.

Everything takes longer than you think

Writing is one of those professions where everything takes much longer. The writing, the publishing, just everything.

Those who are setting out to write their first book usually expect it to be done within a few months or a year at the most. After all how hard can it be? They start airily, telling all their friends, promising copies by the new year.

Five years later they have either given up and the book has receded into prehistory, or they are still struggling and moving forward inch by inch. I am, of course talking of fiction, where the learning curve is very steep, very long and sometimes desperate.

To learn to write fiction well, like any other craft, takes ten years or more. Mastery of any kind takes ten years or more. And no, there are no short cuts.

Beginning writers won’t want to hear that. But I have read so many books, what else do I need? How hard can it get? Hard does not even begin to describe it.

In nonfiction, its comparatively simple work. Research. Write. You can tell more or less how long it will take and make promises to agents and publishers. Fiction has its own seasons and can stump you completely. Some days it flows like honey. Other days you think you are moving rocks.

After you have written a bit of fiction you will have some idea of how long it will take. Then the delay comes from elsewhere. You have some control over the writing deadlines, but, unless you are self-publishing, you have no control over the publishing schedules at all.

Everything takes a very long time, finding an agent, finding a publisher, submitting work and waiting for that momentous acceptance or rejection. Even when you find a publisher it will take at least a year, if you are lucky, before you hold the book in your hands.

Everything takes far longer than you expect – and that is the fact.

Long – yes, tough – yes, but, in the end extremely satisfying. Why else would we still be writing when all the odds are stacked in Himalayan peaks against us?