Peace will get you far — Every fiction writer has days that slip by them despite the best of intentions. Maybe some days you’ll pick up a writing exercise and it won’t work, no matter how much you bang the table and scream at yourself Maybe something came up at work, or maybe household chores got…

And in a way, I’ve been doing the same thing. — I used to love bemoaning the death of originality. Creators have been popping up like mushrooms since around 2019, and the vast majority of them have been making money (or attempting to make money) by writing about the same few things — writing, productivity, entrepreneurship, investment, personal finance and self-improvement. …

Having less money is only part of it — Solopreneurship is the new black. Folks are waking up to the fact that promotions aren’t the only way to make bank, and with the internet being what it is today, it’s really not that hard to make some extra cash. And if you’re lucky, you’ll make a course or ebook…

You have my admiration and my sympathy — So, you want to write literary fiction. Why? Isn’t life hard enough already? Why would you pick such a grim hobby? Okay fine, it’s not a hobby, it’s the immortal spirit seeking a voice, etc. I hear you. I’m in the same boat myself. I often ask the heavens why…

Love it just enough and not too much — I was put on this earth to write fiction. It sounds wishy-washy, but the more I write, the more I know it. There’s a feeling it gives me of being at home, of channeling something inside me that is bigger than myself. It’s beautiful, and it’s pure. …

If that little voice says it’s rubbish, it almost certainly is — Salman Rushdie isn’t my favourite writer. Oh sure, he’s inventive and clever, and he’s decorated from Kolkata to Kansas City. But magical realism isn’t my favourite genre, and even within that genre, he isn’t the best practitioner of it. When he launched a course on Masterclass.com, though, I signed up…

Advice from someone who used to smoke up and write Instapoetry — My dad is the quintessential man in the grey flannel suit. He believes in capitalism, giving your all to the company, traditional societal values, etc. …

And it’s setting me free in so many ways. — I’ve been disillusioned with hustle culture for a while. It’s too fast, too money-oriented and too much of a default expectation to excite me anymore. And my depression/ADHD brain doesn’t do well under that kind of pressure, as I’ve observed over many months and years of experimenting. On the other…

Scintillate them — they’ll thank you for it — When you start out as a professional writer, you’ll be told time and again by peers and mentors: “Write for your audience.” What this usually translates to is “write simply”, another piece of much-touted advice that is usually accompanied by injunctions to write as though a 4th (or 3rd, or…