Author: Krishna

Of ideas. Of inspiration. The sheer will to put in the seemingly tiny amount of work to put words on the page.

These are the things that worry me. Perhaps they worry you too. 

I am astonished when I hear that authors wrote multiple books that never got published. The mind boggles to think that they must have written 40,000-80,000 words, then created multiple drafts based on feedback for each book. That doesn’t even take into account the time they spent identifying literary agents and writing proposals.

How do they come up with so many plots and think of so many characters? Even if the novel is not quite up to the mark, I would find it extremely difficult to create so many storylines. Which, of course, worries me whether I am being a fool even to attempt such a goal. 

I had the same fears when I started this blog. How many writers have attempted to do this and failed? I know of at least one. Me. I have failed countless times to start a blog. Why should this time be different? 

The honest answer is, ‘I don’t know.’ But I can tell you I have a different approach this time around. I think this approach will work. At least I want it to work. And my fears regarding ideas? Well, the more I write, build a bank of posts, the more I think about writing, the more I get new ideas. 

All this is a roundabout way of saying that your mind is an ideas machine. So lead your life, read books, listen to music, watch films. And then show up with a pen in your hand (or the keyboard under your fingertips) and watch it churn out some utter shit, but also a few gems.

One of the fun-nest productivity techniques I have come across is called ‘Eat the Frog’, which takes off from a quote that’s often attributed to Mark Twain.

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

(Note: This does sound like something Mark Twain would say. But I haven’t found any mention of where he said or wrote this.)

Eating a live frog is perhaps one of the most disgusting things you can do. (Unless, of course, you are a snake, and you find frogs delicious. But then again, you also eat rats. So, forgive me if I don’t take tips on fine dining from you.) Anyway, according to ‘Eat the Frog’, you do the thing that feels as disgusting or difficult as eating a frog as soon as you can in the day.

The question, of course, is what is the frog in your life.

The frog might take many different shapes: Going a daily run, attending a class that’ll level up your skills, setting up a meditation practice, or ploughing your way through the first draft of your novel.

So, you take this action every day as soon as possible – preferably first thing in the morning.

But here’s the thing – going on a run is not difficult. Nor is typing words on the keyboard or attending an online class. In other words, the act of running or meditating or writing is not the frog.

The frog is a different beast altogether. In my sightings, the frog takes the form of an icky, sludgy reluctance to do the things that you swore were important to you.

In his book The War of Art, Steven Pressfield calls it ‘The Resistance’. 

It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

The artist Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal) gives it a more eloquent name, ‘The Blerch‘. 

The Blerch represents all forms of gluttony, apathy, and indifference that plague my life. 

I have named the frog Ick-a-lot. I have also knighted him because he has won countless battles with Reason and Better Sense. So my frog is Sir Ick-a-lot.

Why am I spending so many words naming the frog?

1. It’s cool to name things – especially frogs.
2. Just as it is essential to clarify what is truly important to me, I believe it is essential to clearly identify what is holding me back from doing what I have deemed important to me. 

Okay, so now I have named the frog and redefined what it is. What next? 

Initially, I thought, “Well, now that I have identified the enemy, I need to quell it – that is, prevent it from existing – before doing all the things that are important to me.”

That strategy failed spectacularly. Turns out the expectation that I will one day defeat the frog and then never have to feel its icky sludgy-ness IS the frog.

The trick is to understand that the frog is a part of you forever. Importantly, you can do the things that are important to you despite this.

• I accept that it will suck to put in the work sometimes.
  (Do the work even if you don’t feel like it.)
• I accept that the results will not meet my lofty standards.
  (Measure effort, not results.)
• I accept that I will fail along the way.
  (Forgive yourself when you slip up and be ready for battle the next day.)

This approach is allowing me to push along and move forward. It turns out Sir Ick-a-lot is not my friend. But I don’t have to make him my enemy either.

I was frozen with anxiety. This was strange because the decision I had to make was not life-changing or binding. I just had to choose a newsletter service. I wasn’t going to pay any money for it – not immediately any way – and switching to some other service would have been fairly easy. But one part of my mind – the dude in charge of the panic button – would tell you a different story. He acted like my life depended on it. As though the decision I took would change my life irreversibly. As though my success as a blogger would depend entirely on whether I got this decision right. 

I was mindful enough to know panic dude had gone off into a spiral. The realisation did not immediately help break the cycle of thought and emotion. But it gave me enough space to ask, “Where is the danger?” This is a question I often ask to break out of anxiety. Because usually – though not always – there is no danger. 

I asked myself what I could do in this moment to move. Just a little bit. Let it be imperfect. Just move.

Here was the answer: Do the simplest thing even if it is a mistake. 

It worked. I signed up for an email service, played around with its settings on WordPress, and my newsletter was ready to get published.

Why did this approach work? First, I allowed myself to make a mistake. In other words, I gave myself the permission to learn by taking action. Second, by committing to doing the simplest thing, I had made things, well, simple.

I am not sure if I have chosen the “best” newsletter service. I am not sure if it will fulfill all my needs in the months to come. I have simply taken action. I am open to learning. Most importantly I am set to ship my work.

It’s easier than ever before to create and publish content. But this also brings in new demands that creators of the past seldom had to deal with. Take standup comedians. Earlier, they would have to write their sets, revise them, perform, and then revise some more. This was their core skill set. They would work their way up from ‘Open Mics’, to performing at smaller venues, then bigger venues. If they became popular enough, they could standalone shows in auditoriums, go on tours, and do corporate shows. 

Then came YouTube. Now, standup comedians can reach millions of people relatively quickly. However, even though they’ll hire a crew, standup comedians need to have enough understanding to answer questions like, ‘3-cam setup or 4-cam?’, ‘Shoot in 4K or HD?’. Once the video is ready, they need to take calls like  ‘What thumbnail design will attract user attention?’, ‘What’s the best time to upload the video on YouTube?’, ‘What hashtags will push the views?’.

Digital distribution channels like YouTube and Instagram are also gigantic content machines. You have to constantly feed it and do things that please their almighty algorithm that will get you organic views. You have to know what’s trending in order to ride the what’s-popular wave.

The problem is that in the vast ocean of things-to-do-to-win-on-the-internet, it is very easy to forget what makes for good writing/music/standup set/artwork in the first place. 

As a writer, I get better by sitting down each day and put down words on the screen. 

I am not saying that understanding technology, knowing the trends, defining your audience, or improving production value is not important. I am simply saying that they are secondary or tertiary to your core skill set. Because nothing will work for me if I don’t produce words worth reading.

I was a journalist for about nine years. I have been writing for non-fiction TV and digital videos for the past eight years. However, I am a novice when it comes to fiction writing.

I have written a bunch of short stories in a burst of inspiration. I have started and abandoned a couple of novels. I am currently developing what I hope will be a comic book. Oh, and I have another grand ficitonal story building up inside my head.

I guess two questions hold me back:

• First, am I capable of writing a book? 
• Second, am I really capable of writing a book?

So, I attend workshops, read articles on websites for authors, and read books on the art of writing. I learn a lot. But there is so much more left to learn! And so, feeling fairly lost, I postponed the actual act of writing.

Recently, an obvious truth smacked me right in the face. You know, the kind that makes you doubt the intelligence that supposedly distinguishes me from apes.

And the truth is this: Writing IS learning. 

Think about it. You don’t train for a marathon by reading books. Or show your kids YouTube videos and expect them to start tying shoelaces. Or cook a gourmet meal by liking a video on Instagram. Sure, reading books, watching videos, and getting inspired by chefs help – but it is only by taking action that we learn. We need to make a mess, get hurt. Pull a muscle. Fall on your face because the laces came undone. Undercook that pasta. 

Why this didn’t occur to me earlier, I will never know. But now that it has, I am going to take a different mental posture to my fiction writing. Each day, I will sit down to write with the intention of learning to write. I’m not here to create a masterpiece. I’m here simply to learn… and to create a masterpiece 😝.