Writing on Pavan Yarahttps://pavanyara.com/tags/writing/Recent content in Writing on Pavan YaraHugo -- gohugo.ioen-USpavan.yara@gmail.com (Pavan Yara)pavan.yara@gmail.com (Pavan Yara)Pavan YaraSun, 10 May 2020 13:14:09 +0530Writing is a transactionhttps://pavanyara.com/blog/writing-is-a-gift/Sun, 10 May 2020 13:14:09 +0530pavan.yara@gmail.com (Pavan Yara)https://pavanyara.com/blog/writing-is-a-gift/<p><strong>When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, your mind becomes powerfully concentrated. You begin to understand that writing/reading is, above all, a transaction. The reader donates his time and attention, which are supremely valuable commodities. In return, you the writer must give him something worthy of his gift to you.</strong></p> <p>~ Steven Pressfield</p>When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, your mind becomes powerfully concentrated. You begin to understand that writing/reading is, above all, a transaction. The reader donates his time and attention, which are supremely valuable commodities. In return, you the writer must give him something worthy of his gift to you.

~ Steven Pressfield

]]>Still Writing!https://pavanyara.com/blog/still-writing/Fri, 12 Dec 2014 20:50:00 +0530pavan.yara@gmail.com (Pavan Yara)https://pavanyara.com/blog/still-writing/<blockquote> <p>When writers who are just starting out ask me when it gets easier, my answer is never. It never gets easier. I don’t want to scare them, so I rarely say more than that, but the truth is that, if anything, it gets harder. The writing life isn’t just filled with predictable uncertainties but with the awareness that we are always starting over again. That everything we ever write will be flawed. We may have written one book, or many, but all we know — if we know anything at all — is how to write the book we’re writing. All novels are failures. Perfection itself would be a failure. All we can hope is that we will fail better. That we won’t succumb to fear of the unknown. That we will not fall prey to the easy enchantments of repeating what may have worked in the past. I try to remember that the job — as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy — of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it. To be birthed by it. Each time we come to the end of a piece of work, we have failed as we have leapt — spectacularly, brazenly — into the unknown.                               - Dan Shapiro, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life</p><blockquote> <p>When writers who are just starting out ask me when it gets easier, my answer is never. It never gets easier. I don’t want to scare them, so I rarely say more than that, but the truth is that, if anything, it gets harder. The writing life isn’t just filled with predictable uncertainties but with the awareness that we are always starting over again. That everything we ever write will be flawed. We may have written one book, or many, but all we know — if we know anything at all — is how to write the book we’re writing. All novels are failures. Perfection itself would be a failure. All we can hope is that we will fail better. That we won’t succumb to fear of the unknown. That we will not fall prey to the easy enchantments of repeating what may have worked in the past. I try to remember that the job — as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy — of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it. To be birthed by it. Each time we come to the end of a piece of work, we have failed as we have leapt — spectacularly, brazenly — into the unknown.                               - Dan Shapiro, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life</p> </blockquote> Six Rules of Writinghttps://pavanyara.com/blog/six-rules-of-writing/Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:22:00 +0530pavan.yara@gmail.com (Pavan Yara)https://pavanyara.com/blog/six-rules-of-writing/<p>George Orwell’s six elementary rules (“Politics and the English Language”, 1946):</p> <ul> <li>Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print (see metaphors).- Never use a long word where a short one will do.- If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.</li> <li>Never use the passive where you can use the active.</li> <li>Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent .- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous</li> </ul>George Orwell’s six elementary rules (“Politics and the English Language”, 1946):

  • Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print (see metaphors).- Never use a long word where a short one will do.- If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
  • Never use the passive where you can use the active.
  • Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent .- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous
]]>On Writinghttps://pavanyara.com/blog/on-writing/Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:06:00 +0530pavan.yara@gmail.com (Pavan Yara)https://pavanyara.com/blog/on-writing/<blockquote> <p>I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet&rsquo;s, the writer&rsquo;s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet&rsquo;s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.~Speech at the Nobel Prize Banquet after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature (10 December 1950) by Faulkner</p>

I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.~Speech at the Nobel Prize Banquet after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature (10 December 1950) by Faulkner

]]>The Empty Spacehttps://pavanyara.com/blog/the-empty-space/Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:59:00 +0530pavan.yara@gmail.com (Pavan Yara)https://pavanyara.com/blog/the-empty-space/<p>“Writers are often asked, How do you write? With a processor? an electric typewriter? a quill? longhand? But the essential question is, “Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write? Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas – inspiration. If this writer cannot find the space, then poems and stories may be stillborn. When writers talk to each other, what they ask each other is always to do with this space, this other time “Have you found it? Are you holding it fast”&quot;</p>“Writers are often asked, How do you write? With a processor? an electric typewriter? a quill? longhand? But the essential question is, “Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write? Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas – inspiration. If this writer cannot find the space, then poems and stories may be stillborn. When writers talk to each other, what they ask each other is always to do with this space, this other time “Have you found it? Are you holding it fast”"

~http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2007/lessing-lecture_en.html

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