Madam Thinksalot

This book had me annotating like a crazy person. I think if Stephen King saw the number of post-it notes I have on my copy, he would mighty disapprove. What’s clear from his book is that he is a strong believer in going with the flow – a sentiment that rings true in my writer-heart but I am incapable of doing with this anxious brain. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft  is part biography and part collection of tips for an aspiring writer in fiction. The book is like a step-by-step writing guide that is structured in a very intuitive way. King starts off with the simplest thing:  where  to write. He then takes the reader through  when  to write,  what  to write about,  how  to write and  how  to edit your own manuscript. He looks at the significance of symbolism and theme. He gives ample examples to illustrate each point and he hit most of the questions I had when I started writing. Let me be honest: I have read only one Stephen King...

I recently read an article on Literary Hub called The Punctuation Marks Loved (and Hated) by Famous Writers . I was curious to see if any writers I know or like were on the list. I wasn’t expecting much more from the article. I definitely wasn’t expecting to be surprised by how these writers speak about punctuation. They talk about punctuation as if it is a living, breathing thing – a neighbour perhaps, a friend, and in some cases, an arch nemesis. This is what Garielle Lutz had to say about her love for hyphens back in 3 rd grade: “I started putting hyphens between all of the words in my sentences. I thought that was a way to keep things from falling apart, but the teacher made me stop. (…) The hyphen, though, is the sweetest of punctuation marks, because it unites words into couples (and sometimes threesomes and foursomes). It’s an embracer.”  Have you ever heard anyone call a punctuation mark an embracer? It is such a strange thing if you think about it...

A few posts ago, I spoke about how I was a reader at some point, but now can’t read as fast or as much as I used to. I also compared myself to a ceiling fan because I am very poetic like that. I want to subject you to a Freudian deep-dive into why I struggle to read like I used to, but I’ll save that for another post. Today, I’ll just talk about how I am getting back to reading. My focus is not on how to read more books or how to read faster. I am focusing on how to read – how to develop a habit of reading and stick to it. I started with compiling different techniques from different sources. Some worked for me and some didn’t; I’ll go through both below. And in case these techniques do help me read faster or more , I’ll let you know. Set aside time I sit to read at the same time every day – 6:15pm. Initially, I started reading for 15 minutes a day. I would set a reminder on my phone and make sure to keep reading till the alarm goes off. Now, I easily read for 45 minutes, wi...

In case you thought that every post was going to be coherent and insightful, you had an other thing coming, folks. That's not how my brain works. These are ten movies I liked/found decent enough, but I purposely do a terrible job at describing the plot. Also,  Spoiler Alert. I am not sure how far  my 3 am, anxiety-induced descriptions are going to spoil the entire movie for you, but here is an alert, just in case.    1) Ancient man gets mad that his necklace is stolen, so he refrigerates 5 men . (Demonte Colony) 2) Store your brooms in your basement. (The Babadook) 3) Woman goes in search of Singing Man-Child who throws a fit when she calls him sweet and eats chillies. (Hum Dil de Chuke Sanam) 4) Father  needs to poop while his child falls in love. (Piku) 5) End of Season sale for Televisions. Keep an eye on the sky for never-before-seen offers. (Super Deluxe) 6) The one where the woman tries to kill herself with the butter knife. (Dil Dhadakne Do) 7) Woman who...

You know those ceiling fans that only work when they are wound up to level 5 on the regulator? The levels 2, 3, and 4 are basically the same on these fans –blowing air out of your mouth would cool the room faster. If you turn it to 1, the fan stops altogether. So then, you think to yourself, ‘you know what? I’m just going to turn it to 5.’ Now your entire house flies out, there are papers everywhere like a post-apocalyptic movie scene, your hair is messed up. That’s me as a reader. I too (approximately) have 5 reading settings. Setting 5 – My fellow English Literature students know what this is like. This is for when I have to read Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and that excerpt from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov; all in the same semester. 120 pages and 1 hour in, my brain has stopped absorbing anything, but my eyes are absolutely flying across the lines. You want me to critically analyse George an...

Why a blog? This, apparently, is the first question you are supposed to answer when you start a blog. There might be a shorter way of answering this question, but I thought I should tell you all a story first. About a week ago, I was being thoroughly productive and scrolling through Instagram. On my Explore page, I came across a woman’s reels that I found quite funny. I clicked on her page to check out more of her reels. In her bio was a flag – a white flag with a red cross, like a ‘plus’ sign, on it. Now, for all those who know which flag this is without having to google it: Sheldon called; he wants his Fun with Flags copyright back. For those of you who don’t know which flag this is: welcome to my world. I guess this is a good time to mention that it was 12:45 am and my brain, for the most part, was asleep. So, by the time I got to my Google search bar, I had forgotten which way the red lines went. I typed, ‘white flag with red diagonal stripes.’ Apparently, the St. Patrick’s S...