Writing advice from some of the best writers

I love writing. I hope someday I will write something that makes some difference. Till then all I can do is learn how to write better.

Graphic designer Chris Ritters collected writing advice given by some of the best writers and created mouth watering posters. Stick all of them up on your walls and hopefully you will never be short of some inspiration.

Beautiful quotes. Beautiful writers.

Write.

[Hat tip: Holy Kaw!]

Blog Enhancement

I started blogging way back in 2006. At that time it was just a way to express my ideas in words. Also, it did help that my words were quite appreciated.

My blog has always been an important place for me. I assumed it as something that represents me. And I always wanted to make it better. I never actually wrote to increase traffic or wrote about things that everyone else is writing about just to conform. My blog is my personal space which in time has been appreciated and I thank each and everyone who has come across it.

Apart from just writing, there were a couple of things I always wanted to try through my blog. The first one was Blog With Me. I was pursuing my MBA at that time and had a lot of people around me who appreciated my writing. I just wanted to communicate the fact that it isn’t as hard as it looks, and if you try, you will be good at it as well. This idea didn’t quite work as well as I would have liked it to. Requests to people requesting them to write for me turned into persuasion and finally begging. Promises were given but never kept. I guess I should have planned it better. 

Moving on, there was one more aspect I wanted to add to my blog. Images. It gives any write-up a more wholesome appeal to it. But, I wanted to do it differently. So I have been trying to persuade some of my more talented friends to ‘make’ these images for me. Time is a constraint and I have nothing to give in return. Finally, one person took on the challenge and risked her reputation and time for it. 

She is an extremely talented and creative lady. I will not say anything more about her; what she does, what she has done and what she intends to do. None of this is important for now. She will be adding more visual appeal to my blog. New posts will mostly have her stamp on them, and some of the old posts might also be updated. A huge thanks!

I am extremely excited about this enhancement and sure hope she gets as much out of this as me and the people reading. 

Starting next post, she will make her presence felt. Show her some love. 🙂

Help!

I have lost it!

I have completely and utterly lost the will to blog! Actually I am wrong. I have not yet lost the will to blog, otherwise I would not really be writing this right now. It is funny I said writing when I meant typing! Don't we do a lot of it? We say write a text message when we mean type, we say mail it when we mean e-mail it and many more such blasphemys' we commit!

Coming back to the point, I do not think I have lost the will to blog. Quite the contrary actually. I badly want to blog! Really badly! But somehow I have nothing in my mind that I can pen down (there I go again!). I have always wanted to write (yes, we will let it go now) about economics. I adore it! But it requires a certain frame of mind to make something meaningful enough. I do not have that frame right now. I want to write about ads and advertising, but the sheer disdainful quality of advertisements is absolutely mind numbing! 

Well, basically I do not have much to write about. And this is where the title of this post comes in. I do not expect actual people actually commenting and giving me ideas or suggestions, but I thought I should give it a shot anyway! Say what?

My first blog post

This is basically the first piece of writing that I had ever put down (quite literally on paper actually), titled 'The Facial', back in November 2006. Well, obviously it does have its errors and what not. Here it is, unedited 🙂

A time comes in every man’s life when he is forced to do things that he would rather not do; he is pushed to foray into the territories where he would rather not go to. This force, as found out by a very popular survey conducted, 99% of the times happen to be a woman. Yes, the other kind, the type of human being with TWO X-chromosomes to be more precise.

Well to come back to the applicable topic, I was recently influenced by such force, to be more exact – my mom (love you mom), to get a…well…a facial done, the reason being a wedding in the family. Having agreed to her, I embarked upon this quest of getting my face cleaned up by someone else. Throughout my journey upto the saloon, which is a very long and exhausting 2 minutes, my mind was still contemplating this decision. When I finally reached there, I decided to get a haircut to start with, which would give me enough time to think it over. This as it turned out was not a very good idea. People generally talk about this little voice they have inside them, the voice that tells them what is right and what is wrong. Well, I did find that little voice, and millions of others that live with it. If I deduce, that one little voice belongs to a little person, then I am pretty sure that I have a whole country of these little people inside me. They also surely will give India a run for its money to become the largest democracy; and boy do they practice their democracy. They made sure that each and every one of them was heard and for the first time I didn’t hear the snip of the scissor going through my hair. They debated right from the facial being expensive to the risk of one of my friends walking in on me. But the majority thought that I should go through it, and hence by way of voting, I decided to do it.

Then it started, my man, the barber, started off by first applying something on my face and thoroughly rubbing it in, making sure that every inch of my skin was covered with it. For some reason, he had taken a liking to my nose and preferred giving it the maximum attention and rubbing it like it was no one’s business. He kept doing it as if he was extracting some heavenly pleasure out of it. He then left me for a few minutes and came back with something new and slapped it onto my face and the rubbing resumed, there goes my nose again. Though by this time I had got used to the cold in the air conditioned place, he kept applying things that were getting colder and more difficult to bear, sending my skin into shock every time.

Then I guess it was time to bring out the big guns, and out came some thing that actually looked like a gun. I for a second thought I had mistaken a dentist for a barber and was ready to bail out. He plugged it in and thrusted it onto my face. Again maximum attention was given to the nose, which was sure to be the shiniest part of my face at the end of this ordeal. After this gun got done with, out came a machine which was breathing out steam from it. And boy was it hot. Fifteen minutes of steaming later, I was wondering if I had been mislead by my country of little people, when suddenly on my face came a towel which was wet and so cold, it felt like it was on fire. One thing for sure, if my skin can withstand such drastic variations in temperature, it can go through anything. Off came the towel and a minute later, when I thought it was finally over, the man comes in with a brush and starts painting my face with something as I later found out is called a mask. After this I was left by myself to literally dry out and mull over life’s irony. How can we trust a stranger with our hair and our face….HOW? Talking of ironies, while I was left to dry, my man switched on the TV, and was watching a movie with our old friend Jackie Shroff in it. And the irony here, if you are wondering was, Mr. Shroff was trying to get a plastic surgery for himself in the movie. Though I certainly was not getting a surgery done, I surely was expecting a result which was comparable to the same. After drying me, and my skin feeling as if it was being pulled from different directions by the same little people, the man comes in and starts spraying water onto my face, which sent a sizeable amount of jolt through my skin. Then I suddenly heard the sound of ice being taken from an ice tray, and to my worst fears, the man comes in with an ice cube and rubs it onto my face. This sealed the argument, making me want to bomb the country of little people inside me.

Finally, to finish it off, as per trend, the man goes ahead and applies something that burns the tissue out of my skin, making sure that I am not doing this again and making me want to bomb the country again. The question that you would now be asking is, was all this punishment worth it. Am I more pleasing to the eyes of the onlooker? Well I guess the only way to find out is by risking using your own eyes. Till then CYA and take care.

Blog with me.

Dear Friends,

It delights me to know that quite a few of my friends read my blog. So, it means one of my friends is reading it right now. So, I will make this post in second person (you being the second person). 

The thing is, I like writing. I think it is one of the easiest things one can do and get appreciation for just being true and simple. I have encouraged quite a few people to blog and a few of them actually started. Most of them then stopped after their first post. To all of them, I request you to please begin again. Just write; then post.

I want to go a step further and tell all of those who have never blogged, to start. I know you are apprehensive about doing it. But start.

I have been quite inspired by the3six5. It is a blog which is attempting to give 365 different point of views in the year 2010. It invites bloggers from across the globe to submit a post about a day in their life. 365 days, 365 points of view. I really like this idea. And I want to attempt something using this idea.

I invite all of my readers – each and everyone of you – to write a post, for my blog. You can write about anything you want to and mail it across to me. I will post it on my blog, anonymous and unedited, regardless of the topic. Once posted, I would want all the other readers to comment with their honest views on the post (this will encourage the author). The name of the author need not be revealed till the author wants to. This is primarily to encourage those who are apprehensive about what or how they have written. 

A second reason for doing this is: I have a lot of friends who are fellow bloggers. I like the way they write and each one of them has their own way of writing. I would absolutely love it if they could write a post for my blog. It would be kind of an honour for me. 

I do not know if this is going to work. I do not know if you will take this seriously and actually submit a post. I would be delighted if each and every person who reads this post mails me something. Even a paragraph would be just awesome. 

With Love,

Aditya Kandala.

P.S. Mail me: mail(at the rate)adityakandala(dot)com. (Please do, I doubt I have ever wanted anything else to work as much as this before :))

My blogging trend

So you might think it is a real loser thing to do. But I have made a graph of my blogging trend and above are the results. Started early, did not do much in between and now doing more than ever before.

A notable increase in May and June this year thanks to my summer project. And that I guess has continued till now. Hope to blog more.

An incredible urge

I presently have this incredible urge to write something. I don’t know what to, but I have to!

The cause of this urge are two people, my fellow Placement Committee members from the 2011 batch and also fellow bloggers. One is Rachana and the other is Vikash (yes it is spelt that way). They not only liked my blog and what I have written but discussed a few things about blogging and it has now got me going.

What I like about both their blogs at first are the names. I could never think of a cool name for my blog. Mine has always been adityakandala or some other format of my name. But AngelicHuman and DelusionsOfPetrification are two really cool names. I don’t even know what the second one means. Vikash you owe me an explanation. They both write differently, Rachana is more of a formatted serious kind of writer who might not write unless she doesnt have anything concrete to write about, quite similar to me. Vikash doesnt really care about formatting and just goes with his thoughts, I like this. Vikash is also into poetry by the way.

I am not some experienced blogger or writer to comment on their writing and will not do that. This was just an attempt at writing something random without having any particular topic in mind. Done.

Update:

Vikash: delusions of petrification means that…u are under the fake illusion of being tied down ….or stoned…from doin nethn but its just ur illusion …till u realize ur worth!

I have moved :)

Yes, my dear imaginary readers. I have officially moved to Posterous. However, Blogger will still be update via Posterous!

In short: http://www.adityakandala.com is still the URL but it will get you to Posterous. The URL for the blogger page is http://adityathinking.blogspot.com just in case 😛

I shall soon transfer all my old posts to Posterous with the help of the good people (Sachin & Gary) at Posterous once they make it possible 🙂

I am planning to move

Well, it’s not that kind of moving where I would need to call a truck and get all the heavy stuff in and rearrange and reorganize; OK, I will be doing the latter part.

Here’s the thing, I have been using Blogger (since I started and I thought it was pretty cool. But now I am being persuaded to move to Posterous by none other than Mr. Paape. Now for some time, I am going to be posting at both the blogs. As any blogger should, I am going to let my readers (imaginary though they might be) decide.

So please do me a favour and post your preference as a comment (HAHAHA, I am actually going to get comments!). Finally, depending on your preference and how I find my experience at Posterous, I shall migrate accordingly. So do you want to make this Mumbai or Shanghai?

Looking forward!