My Summer Reading

I tried to write a draft of this post a few days, writing about what I would be reading in the coming few weeks. However, my reading list has been changing so rapidly, I ended up abandoning that post. Suddenly I find myself jumping from book to book wildly, dipping in for a little and then moving on. So instead I thought I would write about the books I have already read recently, and the ones I’m currently working my way through.

I few weeks ago I completed the excellent book How To Fly A Horse by Kevin Ashton. I loved it, because it debunked the myth that some people are just more talented than others, or somehow more lucky. Innovation and creation is within the grasp of all of us, but in order to really be innovative and creative, one of the foremost prerequisites is simply good old-fashioned hard work. Unglamorous, but true.

I also recently re-read TheTalent Code­ by Daniel Coyle. I read this book a couple of years ago, and this time around I absorbed a lot more. In fact, for a while, almost all of my conversations have been peppered with – well, The Talent Code says…, ending with exhorting the person to read the book right away. My favorite bit – once you start looking at things from the point of view of acquiring skill, it’s a lens through which you can look at many more situations than the ones we would obviously think of, such as sports or artistic ability. For instance, I am looking at improving my time-management and productivity as a skill that I can practice deeply and get better at.

A fascinating book that I’m currently reading is Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Stewart’s Follow The Story, on writing non-fiction. It is slow going because I’m trying to absorb all his insights on writing (from a perspective of journalism, but invaluable nonetheless). It is excellent though, and I can’t wait to get my hands on his other books.

A completely enjoyable, just for pleasure book that I read a few days ago, bought months earlier at the airport bookshop and hoarded for just the right moment, was the newest Agatha Christie, written superbly by Sophie Hannah – The Monogram Murders. I highly recommend it to die-hard Christie fans – there were moments where I had to remind myself that it wasn’t actually written by the great Queen of Crime herself.

I’m actually reading a lot more than just the ones mentioned above – due to my restlessness, research for my current book, and just love of devouring books as fast as possible. My beloved Scribd app actually makes it so much easier to read dozens of books at once – keeping perfect track of what I was reading, till what page and on what device – allowing me to switch seamlessly and always have something to read. I have started to use the few minutes I have on my short bus ride to the gym and back to dip in and read a few pages of whatever suits my mood at that point.

What books are you reading this summer?

The Shadow of Perfectionism

Things have been a little too quiet here on the blog front, because I have been busy frantically trying to complete a book that is releasing early in September (more details here). I really thought I would be done by now - especially as the first draft of this book only took me 3 weeks, which is quite a record for me.

Somehow however, the subsequent drafts is taking more than twice as long, which is very frustrating. And I have been racking my brains trying to figure out why. I'm putting in more hours than I did before (in fact, I meticulously track my time with my trusty app everyday, so I know how much my time commitment has increased by). I am working everyday, sacrificing things like outings and socializing so that I can make faster progress.

The other thing I have done much better with this book than previous ones is to track my progress, and plan what I will get done, how and when. I have steps laid out that describe what I will do in what order, and then I also write daily goals. The problem is that I never seem to be able to complete what I plan to each day, and even when I do, it feels like I'm going at a very slow pace.

The only thing I can think of to explain the slow progress - perfectionism. I have been laboring over every footnote, every reference, every sentence. Even though my planning process provides for a whole line editing stage, later, once the content has been finalized. After all, there is no point perfecting a sentence that ultimately gets thrown out. And yet, I somehow can't seem to stop myself from trying to do that anyway.

I have been trying to apply the advice from Hillary Rettig's book on becoming a prolific writer, and while her book has helped my process, I still can see that I'm not truly giving in. She suggests not trying to perfect anything - just making obvious changes and edits and moving on to the next section, and by doing things just in little bits, you actually make faster progress, with less stress. Somehow that isn't working - because I can't seem to leave a section till the thorny problems are worked out. And that tendency makes me avoid sections - because I know it has thorny problems that I will then be forced to fix, right then and there.

This is where the title of this post comes in: the shadow cast by perfectionism. By insisting my work looks perfect as I go along, or that I do research again on sections that I have already written, I am going much slower than I need to, feeling frustrated and hating the process of writing a book that initially I was really looking forward to. Not only that, since I have been thinking about perfectionism, I have been seeing how its rearing its ugly head almost everywhere in my life lately.

I have been putting off writing blog posts because I don't feel I have the perfect topic to write about. Or start working on my novel - which till just a little while ago I was quite excited about. Or a long list of other things. There are so many projects that I won't even begin because I am worried that I won't do them perfectly.

I know many readers (perhaps coming from the same place I usually am) think perfectionism is a good thing, another name for it could be "having standards". Sure its not a bad thing to have standards. But what if they hold you back from achieving what you really want to in life? I have recently been really thinking about what I want to accomplish, and thinking about time and years as an incredibly finite resource that is slowly ticking away no matter how much in denial I am about it.

Recently reading about some incredibly success women, mostly my own age, who have accomplished a lot, many things they knew nothing about when they started, I looked at myself and wondered - what would I be able to accomplish if I were to stop demanding to do it perfectly? This question has been bringing up some uncomfortable answers. It appears there is a lot I could do if I weren't hung up on doing everything perfectly. Putting aside the fact that I haven't done anything perfectly ever (because how could you really, when everything is improvable), I think its an impossibly high standard and one that would only allow you to try things you are already good at. And in my opinion that's no way to live. Afraid to step out of my "good" zone. I would never grow or learn new things in that way. Or would learn very very slowly.

And really, that's the shadow of perfectionism. It stops you from being all you could be, and how incredibly sad is that? I vow from today that even though I may not always win, I will battle with this monster daily, not letting it rob me of all that delicious possibility.

And now I turn to you dear reader; ask yourself this question - what would I be able to accomplish if I were to stop demanding to do it perfectly?

Stepping Out of The Shadows

I have been reading books on the art and craft of writing ever since I found a whole shelf of them in the British Council library in New Delhi, at the age of fourteen or so. I would bring home books on dialogue, setting, narrative and characters. I read articles on writing query letters and doing research and getting an agent - all the traditional aspects of being a writer, before the advent of indie publishing. I read every book I could get my hands on, and yet almost never wrote anything myself. I didn't believe that anyone would want to read anything I had to say, in fact, I believed that I didn't really have anything to say. I was what Julia Cameron calls, a "shadow writer".

Sure, I wrote essays in school for assignments and tests. I got back my English exams with glowing praise on the margins of my essays - I remember one comment from my English teacher, someone I particularly adored and respected - she had said "It's a pleasure to read your writing, as always!" I loved the praise, and yet couldn't bring myself to believe it. She was just being nice, I told myself. I entered competitions in school for essays, and won certificates. And yet I continued to believe that I wasn't any good at writing - after all, if I had been, I would have won first prize. I was waiting for external validation, a stamp that told me I was a writer, and that now I had permission to create. And yet I rejected every form of validation that I did happen to receive, as not being good enough, or not conclusive enough to "prove" my writing talent.

By the time I graduated high school, I had an idea at the back of my mind that one day I would write books, and be a "real writer", but that it would be something I did along with my primary career. It never occurred to me that I could ever earn a living solely by writing, or that I would want to. By this time I had stopped asking myself whether I could write, but I still wasn't writing anything that wasn't assigned.

In college, I started to rub up against the writing life by fantasizing about writing freelance articles, and collected writer's guidelines for magazines like the way some people collect stamps. I carefully filed them away and dreamt of the articles I could be writing, deluding myself that just one of these days I would get around to actually writing something.

In the meantime, I had been commissioned by an Indian publisher to write a study guide on the poems of Seamus Heaney (how this came about is a story for another day). I was thrilled, and working on the book while juggling law school and many extra-curricular activities, but I still didn't really think of myself as a writer, published or otherwise. I tried to get a gig writing reviews on arty events on campus, but the editor probably didn't like the one review I wrote for him, and never asked me back. That one rejection did more to convince me that I couldn't write (and couldn't ever hope to) than all the compliments I had received over the years made me think I could.

It was only after graduation, when I came across a yellow book in a bookstore on a day when I was browsing the writing reference section, as usual, that I finally started to have the courage to put down words on paper without waiting for an external assignment. Julia Cameron's book "The Right to Write" gave me the tools to tentatively explore writing without expectations, although it was predictably rocky going. Although I didn't necessarily get very far with my first attempts, at least I had begun.

In one of her other books, Julia mentions the notion of "shadow artists", who desperately want to make art, and thus try to stay close to their chosen medium in various ways, when they lack the courage to actually try to create art themselves. Thus my years of reading books about writing, even when I wasn't writing anything myself. And when I finally did start to write, I almost gave up just as soon, because those writing books filled my head as I tentatively put down one word after another - I started to think about how difficult it was to get an agent or write a good query letter or how writers got hundreds of rejection letters before they sold anything. I was putting the cart before the horse - worrying about something that wasn't likely if I never finished any piece of writing.

Last year I published four books. I am currently working on what will hopefully be my sixth published book. Yesterday, I was at an event where when people asked me what I do, I waffled, and talked about my consulting and research projects, and then finally, tentatively announced - "I write books". The reactions were varied, and some people showed a lot of interest. I found myself hesitatingly explaining what my current book was about - and although I could have sounded more confident - I realize that I'm no longer in the shadows, cowering. I stepped out, shrugged off the cloak of invisibility, and decided, however shakily, that I would claim my identity as a "real artist". I am a writer - I repeat to myself over and over, hoping it sticks. I might find it hard to always claim my title, but at least these days I no longer need to covet my art from a distance. I write, often, and regardless of the quality of each individual piece, as the work piles up, I know that my artist self is as much a part of my life as any other part.