Pen and Paper

I want you guys to become paid journalists rather than a charity journalist. Initially it’s good to become a charity journalist. You get a byline – the feeling of your name printed there in black and white is exhilarating but if this continues for a long time then many good journalists break instead of breaking records. Writing is fun. But you would love to shun this fun if you are not getting dhan for penning this fun. Only Bill Gates can enjoy writing for fun.

Is writing an inborn art? Or can it be acquired?

If we trace the history of recent batch of Indian writers, be it The Goddess of Big Things (Arundhati Roy of The God of Small Things) or ‘obsessive compulsive writer’ of Spouse (Shobhaa De, Goddess of pulp fiction), for the sake of name (Jhumpa Lahiri of Namesake), not so angry hungry Ghosh (Amitav Ghosh of Hungry Tide) and many more (I am not going to give you A to Z list, no spoon-feeding please), we come to know that all these great writers were not born with a pen in hand.

So where lies the magic?

Come on, its not there in Harry Potter’s magic wand.

Then?

I am not going to write a book about how to write a book. This has become staple of hundreds and thousands of books. Then what the hell are you trying to say?

Hey chill man, don’t invoke this western abuse. You too have become victim of western lingual invasion!

Since you are a journalist, you must be acquainted with 2ps of journalism: Pen and Paper.

Just pick them up and start putting your own ideas into words. Don’t be bothered about your target audience; just write for the sake of self-pleasure.

Or if you are a modern journalist of this millennium, then you must be having a television look-alike box which is centre of paperless world, just sit in front of it and instead of being on porn, practice self-infliction of your fingertips.

The magic has just begun.