I was asked for advice by a friend of mine who is a school teacher and wants to inculcate an interest in reading and writing in young children at her school and in several other nearby schools. Idea seemed very revolutionary. But who will take the responsibility of telling their parents who know the condition: that millions that are born, grow and get old and die without getting an opportunity to get a dignified job? Now education is not to get educated but to get degree that fetches fat salary.

Literature is out of contest. Who wants to waste time on things like this? Who wants to come into a fuss about what literature can do for human? Most of parents have hardly ever liked to meet any writer in their life. If they find a famous one then they get clicked a picture, post on social media and the rest leave for journalist to scribe in their interview column.

In most colleges and universities in the name of education especially in literature professors are trying to just pass their time, somehow complete their syllabus and get fat salary and gossip around and pass time in engaging in work politics.

In such a society who can think that one day any one will like to think about inculcating an idea of teaching reading and writing for school going kids. At first this idea really sounded hopeless and I suggested her don’t burden yourself with such thoughts. If everything goes well, school will get the benefit and the next year school fee will go higher. If something goes wrong your job will be at stake.

… But I find her serious at her decision. She wants to start a literary club; she wants my support and suggestion to implement it on the ground level.

The most important thing to understand is that nobody wants to study. School going kids are piled with a lot of pressure over their head. Study has become a dragon that has fire and flames and from childhood they learn to be fearful of this dragon-like study.

First, it is very important to motivate them to love study and not find it like a dragon. Then let them get into a habit of reading and automatically the power of written communication will increase. They will learn to write slowly but reading habit is a must. Writing takes a little extra time but it comes gradually.

Let start with a class: we can easily find that in every class there are many students who are called back benchers and have less interest in study. Motivate them and breeze this motivational and knowledge gap into them. In each class you can find some students, who are interested to learn new things. Churn out first these students and then the next and the next. This way you will get increasing number of students which will be a motivating factor for you as well.

It is also important to motivate them to work as a team. Give some students to read some books or novels and then ask them to write their opinion on that novel. After that give that review page to other students to edit and then to others to design so the final product is very eye catching and every student gets equal level of involvement and creativity to show.

It is also good idea to have some writing activity and competition in the school and motivate everyone to participate and learn something.

It is very important to start somewhere and get ready to bear the pain and start a good environment for real education and not for just crazy fight for degrees.

When a writer falls in love, he feels as if wind is fondling the grown up paddy fields and whispering as they are ready to meet their destiny for which they have been born. He feels as if leaves are dancing on trees and welcoming the spring and this world is again changing and turning green. There is an energy of change everywhere and one divine energy is regulating and making everything well, giving meaning to one and to all for their wanted existence.

A writer starts dreaming with open eyes about her presence around him and with his closed eyes see her coming closer and closer to him. He is as if waiting for her till eternity and he has been waiting and waiting as rain waits to pour on earth. He is still all wet and shivering for the fine whiff of her presence. She is the one that will complete his living, his purpose of living and bearing all which he is to be done to live for her longings alone.

A writer reads poems and feels that it is all written for her only and he can do better and he wants to write. There is a tempest in his mind and he wants to hold them all to show her what has changed in his being. He is no more the same as he was. He is smiling, not thinking about his imaginative characters, not talking with them anymore, not thinking where this love could lead him, and just talking in his head with his love.

She has succeeded in arresting him and he just wants to be as a slave and walk behind her wherever she wants to take him. For her he is there and in deep within feelings are telling him that she is the only one with whom he longs to live and die for her only. She is the center of all his thoughts and his all works. He is redefined and regrown towards a madness that allows his senses to perceive her even when her presence is yet to come.

She is the dawn and sunset. She is the rise of the lovely moon and twinkling star. She is everything. She is a creation of a new world. She is the new Earth. She is the one for whom this whole world conspires to whisper to make him think all about her. He finds her in everything. She is standing in crowd as if standing alone for him. She is alone and lost in his thoughts only. She has come out of his dream to love him and teach him to love her only.

A writer is no more a writer but a dreamer and so he knows the worst heart ache. His world ends there and after that he only breathes as if it is the last promise to live for her sake, to live just to tell the world that he has once perceive the softness and delicate touch of love that had once rattled his heart and make this world a wonderful place to live. Without her this earth holds no beauty and no reason to live longer but it is just breath which is left to continue and all the rest has died long back with her.

Such outcry of joy and sorrow is in the innate nature of an artist and such love and heart rending is the outburst in his writing. Writer is very romantic and very caring person. His love is the only source of living and the rest is a worldly affair.

Life and living is not a piece of cake especially when one chooses to be a writer. A writer doesn’t write only for money. Money is just means to support his writing and better living. But a writer is always concerned about his writing and improving it the best way he can.

A writer is always busy. He is living two lives at a same time. He is living his life as well as the life of his character. In fact, he lives several lives only because many novel characters are under progress and living inside him. He is obsessed with his characters and the world where his characters are living. At one point of time even if he dreams something, he tries to figure out how one of his characters could choose to dream and like to react.

A writer is always connected with his characters. Something is always going on in his mind. It is really very difficult for any other person to understand how suddenly he becomes sad or happy like a child.

It is no wonder he can sit in front of his laptop for hours and even though he writes nothing, he is busy working. He hardly gets time to come out of his imaginative characters. He meets real people, visits real places but he always thinks about how he can connect it to his imaginative people and place.

A writer is a person who uses his negative as well as his positive energy to write. It is a tool to go into his character. Negativity affects him badly. He often fears from the unknown future probably because he knows how in life one mistake can collapse the whole building.

Writing is not arranging one word after another. It is like collecting dreams and bringing them on the surface of reality. It is work like transforming a world into a work of art. Writing has a discipline and a writer has to maintain it. But this discipline has very thin and vague presence in a writer’s life which is very difficult to analyze.

A writer lives his life as his characters. He looks at his problem as his characters. He tries to find solution not just for himself but for his character too.  Life always brings strange situations and it also teaches how one chooses to handle it. Indeed, sometimes someone can miss to handle the situation, but writer has another chance to rectify it and make it good in his work.

Writer never fears from complications. It enables him to weave his plots, understand situations and options his character can choose. As the character develops and gains maturity, a writer watches how the character likes to exploit his resources to get out of it.

Writers have different timing and different convent zone which we call genre. In fact, it is his personal exposure to life. Some like to write romance, thriller, paranormal, etc. It is always their choice. It is always backed by their believes and experiences.

Every writer has unique timing of writing. Some writers start writing at 2:00 AM and other may go to sleep by 4:00 A.M. There is also no surety that page or screen could not be blank. It can be blank. This happens with me too. I write nothing but just wait and after a long I leave my laptop and go to sleep. It happens. It can happen to any writer.

A writer is trying to see his things with his own eyes. He talks as we talk with others in his head. He works in no time frame and finishes his work at his own time.

A writer also has a family. He also loves to be with them but sometime it becomes next to impossible to be in the gathering.  It is difficult whom to answer and whom to convince that you a writer at soul and your soul is always with your story.  Indeed, sometimes storm leaves nothing at its place, relations seem difficult but have faith that the other loves you too and understands you better.

Everyone who loves writing wants to be a novelist, poet, journalist or someone who can be remembered for his words. This is the addictive idea that persuades a person to become a writer.

No wonder everyone wants to be an immortal like William Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, O Henry, Maupassant, Leo Tolstoy, Summerset Maugham, D. H Laurence and many such noted names.

Well, these are the names a child hears during his school days and their works are introduced and taught in the class. Soon they become his ideal and unknowingly a child dreams to be a writer. He doesn’t know what path he is choosing and what does a writer mean. He knows only what his soft heart have perceived.

This idea grows with him, each day and each night, and that makes him a very different person altogether. He becomes inquisitive to know more about the complex human nature and he starts to enjoy the supply of good stories which have some interesting characters and gradually he starts to find some around him too.

He starts to believe that this world which one calls a reality is also a dream of open eyes where sometimes incidence jostles us so strongly that we lose everything and we start to learn new things, same as we read in books that there is a new beginning after each end.

He learns that story has legs. It has power to regrow and motivate us to live. He learns that life is always backed by stories, folklores and poetry. Writing is just a magic to enter into a mind of a human and see and feel one.

Story is everywhere. Life is made up of stories. It is deep within us. It is in our DNA.

Every story is once an incidence and gradually incidences after incidences story comes before us and imagination covers these all into a new world where words are the most powerful supply of life.

Every novel which is written is based on some reality. Writer looks for a minute and works long within his mind. Imagination and creativity develop a small incidence into a great story like a spark can erupt into a volcano.

Writing is an obsession. It is a way to see this is untrodden path of life which needs to be redefined, summarized, expressed and answered back.

Writing is a journey of going into the unknown which is unknown until it is all finally written. It encircles the heart, soul and body of a human, his total behavior and social environment where one learn to live. This suitable pack of world is a part of this world and imagination to go beyond and in search of better living, for better tomorrow and betterment of human.

Writing is just a way of life and writer lives within his characters and never realizes how all this makes his life cut off from his own people with whom he wants to live forever.

Writers’ life is like a child’s heart, always inquiring and inquisitive to learn something new. A child never realizes when he has grown and life dissolved and disappeared into books and he is always in a book drunken state and living and learning all in its intoxicating influence.

He never realizes that he is no more a child and his childhood is lost somewhere in the deep forest of writing and books and the toughest facts which he now has to understand and live is the pain to live in solitude as a result of his pray to be a writer.

In fact, writing is not an art but a pain to live alone for the rest of the life without caring that one can be paid for his words, without thinking about who may like to taste the ripen fruit of exceptional mind.

The very idea to be a writer is a merit to communicate with the world and himself without actually taking the risk to actual talking with anyone around you. It is a merit to speak loud in desert where hardly anyone is seen. It is a communication to the stranger who is also looking for solitude like yours as a reader and wants to share and fill their solitude with yours.

Writing is a communication where finger succeeds over tongue and things are so descript that only true silence can go deep within the lines and see the world growing, building or moving just to throw words that are ranging our emotions.

Writing is just a way to enter into a world of others and drawing other into your world which is not a child’s play but a power of solitude which develops and speaks out loud only in silence and comes through writing.

A child is taught in school and his entire life goes on teaching him the one lesson he learnt and makes him practice.

If loneliness is accredited to writer’s life then why do they write? After all loneliness is no good and there is a difference between aloneness and loneliness.  You can check your feelings and find you are alone but you are not feeling lonely. To simplify you can say that aloneness is a physical term when you find that there is no one around you and so you are alone. On the other hand, Loneliness means a feeling of suffering. You have people around you and you are willing to interact with them but you are unable to get any. That means you can be lonely in gathering, which is definitely a worst kind of thing.

Well, question automatically comes in mind: Are writers masochists? Do they love to offer themselves pain? If no then why do they write? Like a coin has two sides similarly writers also have. First let us talk about positive side:

• It is actually a slow learning process: Indeed, learning is a slow process and a writer is a life time student who always tries to dig deeper into a soul and then express it with meaningful words.
• It is a fun to write: Writing is always a part of imagination, concentration and getting better understanding about things so it is a fun to see your things written clearly and people appreciate you for this.
• It is a way to remove loneliness: It is a big problem in everyone’s life and unfortunately we have no solution for it. Better change your focus from people to book and in the company of book one can never find loneliness.
• It reminds of past and the present: We all agree that it is very difficult to analyze any situation and take the right decision. Better write the incidence and learn from it.   
• It helps to unload my life: Our experience is not always good and it is no good to share it with others so better write in your diary or unload yourself through creative writing.
• It leaves legacy: There are several books which are more famous than their writers. It is a dream of every writer that propels their name and people remember him as the writer of that very unique book.
• To discover the unknown: In our small life it is very important to learn new things and writing not just help the writer to discover new things or profound things but it also helps the readers to discover the unknown.

It is always wonderful to be connected with yourself and learn the magic that life holds but writing requires great patience and obsession. It is not easy to wait long to see everything, which was once in our mind, translated into words. This process of writing takes a lot of time from your life and keep you isolated and away from others so there are several negative sides faced by writers too:

• It is insane to talk with your mind: A writer needs a time to be creative and think about his character so he can go deep into the psyche of his created character and sometimes it sound insane when there is no one around you and a writer is busy in thinking for long and talking in his head with his character.
• It is difficult to live alone: it really sound interesting when we read that million copies were sold and interview, cover page stories are coming in newspapers and magazine as if you are a celebrity but writer is a loner.
• It is difficult to match a match: people want company but writer needs lonely time then how wife who is supposed to live always with her husband can live when husband needs her or him just for while mostly busy in his creative world.
• It is important to read: Add salt to injury, a writer must be a good reader first, which takes a lot of his time. Reading also gives ideas and a flow to his writing. The more information writer has the better will be his writing. So, writer loves reading.
• It is difficult to be social: Socializing is a pain for writers. They just like to sit in a corner like any party pooper. They wall themselves and they invite depression and loneliness into their life. Study says writers suffer from depression ten to twenty times more than others.
• It is not good to be obsessed: Obsession is not a good thing if you want to live a balanced normal life. But people who are obsessed with what they do are the people who are the best at what they do. They are always focused on their work and they are like a slave who is forced to work all the time.
• It is no good to waste life like a slave: It is possible that one man is proved genius in his respective field but surely can be proved idiot in other ways. We all have one life to live and it is no wonder to pour out life in words and forget the actual life.

Life is a big choice how you want to live. Be sure about your abilities and hidden traist that are ready to transform your life. Life is just a journey and writing is one way to reach your own level of satisfaction. Try this!

It is never an easy choice to be a writer in life no matter how many inborn abilities you have for writing. A writer must have a time to conceive an idea in his mind like a mother to deliver it on paper. It takes a lot of time and a lot of physical and mental exertion and the worst part is that it takes the writer into loneliness.

It is the allotted time when he thinks and concentrates on his ideas and gradually grows its ideas in a new world which is similar to this world and slowly he writes. And this capacity to create a new world through words is his biggest strength but it consumes his entire life.

No one knows at what point of time an idea sparks in his mind and continues to remain there and how actually it finds the flow in words and splays on papers.

Deciding for a career as a writer has never been easy and for me it can never be. I think it may have been an easy choice if I were from any privileged class but when you have to struggle for means of subsistence during the day and write at night then life is pretty unbelievable.

As writer’s loneliness has always sparked me and my thinking so my point of view on any subject was unacceptable to most of the people around me. I remained devoid of social interaction and majority of my time I have been sitting on my head as much as on my chair. It is no surprise that I lack opportunity to let on my mind with friends and others. This has always made me a thick hearted and thin skinned.

I feel a writer tries first to go into the shoes of the character and then understand their behavior and then comes to any conclusion. It becomes a part of their normal personality so much that it becomes difficult to take things for granted as mostly people do.

If any remark or behavior is found strange, a writer gives their outmost time to understand and in general, people never appreciate such behavior but a writer gilds there something unique into such character.

A writer lives with his character and in an artistic manner presents that character into his story. A writer knows well where exactly change his character and where to end his story. This skill differentiates one writer from another, although there are several other things that distinguish one writer from others.

Writing is just one element of storytelling. Another important part which works as a soul of the story is the way the characters are developed and presented. Actually this is the mark of a writer and it is not easy and not a one-day affair. It takes years to develop.

This is one of the most difficult things that creates a big trap and most writers including me feel hesitant to openly share their work.

A writer is very scared of showing his things as mostly the callous criticism makes the situation jump from the frying pan into the fire.  This adds frustration, anger and complains in life.

This actually poisons the life. Sometime it makes the story better, sometimes not but it increases the writer’s struggles and problems. It is mostly seen that writer’s family and friends have to bear his frustration and mood swings.

These hours of frustration and anger are mostly due to self-criticism, self-created mess as he fails to find the actual answer asked by readers. Sometimes it leads to depression. If you look around you can easily find some prominent writers whom Depression kept in its hold like Sylvia Plath, James Baldwin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Leo Tolstoy, Tennessee Williams and many more.

Socrates once said:  “All good epic poets recite all their fine poems not by skill but because they are inspired and possessed . . . they are not in their right minds.”

Bookstores always fascinate me and whenever I get the time I like to be there. The hassle and bustle there always make me feel as if I am standing in the right place. I enjoy the ambience of that place. I love to see people busy at book shelves in order to find their favorite author’s books. It is really wonderful to see people standing long while reading as if their books have arrested them. Such involvement of readers could encourage any writer including me.

I often get a feel that this is the place where I belong. This is where my dream is hanging. I see the cover page, publisher’s name, design, paper, looks and what not. I get the feel that one day like this my books will also be coming in the market and people will read. To make this dream possible I should work.

I see how books are categorized as per their genre and sometime some fast selling books are on display to catch out eyes. Each time I see a new name and I get a feel that one day my novel will come here. I will be a writer.

Writing is a game to be mad. It is not easy. It is like probing your own wound again and again and making it bleed to write words. But bookstore makes me feel that I am not alone. If others have written and books one after another are coming, then why can’t I write.

Interesting, I pat my back and I happily walk to a bookstore. This place is like an energy store. I go there to gain energy and then work harder on my writing project.

Bookstores are the best place to know the different genre and their best-selling authors and which book is moving faster.

I get some opportunity to talk with the book sellers, book suppliers and readers. It is really great to have a face to face talk with them and they are in fact the rich vein for getting information as to what is happening in the world of books around us.

It is really good that bookstore looks are also changing with the change of time. Now some coffee shops are moving in and it is wonderful to flip pages of your author’s book while sipping your coffee.

Sometime I wonder how some people don’t like reading books. Study says reading for just six minutes is enough to reduce stress by 68%. Writing has wonderful good effect on our healthy living. It is found that writing helps people to reduce their distress level and even it helps in faster healing of their physical wounds.

It is also found that writing helps patients of several diseases like asthma, as it was found that those who write have fewer attacks; AIDS patients who write has higher T-Cell counts and Cancer patients have better optimistic perspectives and improved quality of life.

It is also seen that it is not necessary to become a writer or novelist but even small writing like blogging can help. It is seen that those who are given opportunity to write their emotional upheavals gain physical health too. They have changes in immune system so they don’t go to doctor very often.

This modern world of technology is changing fast. The looks of bookstores are also changing. Now we have online bookstores. Now we have reading devices and we can also read on our laptop and mobile. We have audio books. Now things have changed and improved a lot but the ambience of the bookstore and the way it enables me to be the writer is the best.