Ask the Author: Pawan Mishra
Answered Questions (10)
Pawan Mishra
1) Acknowledge that reading is an important part of your existence.
Unless you are serious about reading, there are plenty of things in your life that would keep you away from reading making months and years pass, quite shockingly. This is the very first step you need to ensure that you have a commitment towards reading regularly.
2) Designate a specific time to read, even if it’s not a lot of time.
Whether it’s 10 minutes before you sleep, or while you are commuting to work in subway, or when you get up in the morning, or when you are waiting in car for someone in the parking, identify the times you would love to catch up with reading.
3) Ensure accessibility.
If you are new school, the ebook readers are the best in carrying thousands of books with you everywhere at any time. If you are old school, keep books at the places you are likely be needed them.
4) Consider audio versions.
Today’s fast pace often requires us to employ our senses together to maximize processing of the information in a more efficient manner. When you are reading a book, you need to be fully engaged with the book at the time. But when you are listening to a book, you can easily do many other things at the same time, like driving, taking a bath, etc. To many, listening to a book doesn’t bring as much of a true feeling as reading a book, but then, one would agree that listening is better than not being able to find time to read!
5) Understand the genres you like.
Once you have understood your commitment to read, find out what genre(s) are you really after. Look at the books you have loved in the past and determine what’s common theme(s). There are a plenty of free websites today (like goodreads), that make it extremely easy to understand what are other books similar to the ones you have liked in the past.
6) Build your reading queue and track progress.
There are very good websites that represent amazing readers’ communities. For example, goodreads allows you to build your reading queue, track reading progress, find similar books, look at reviews and ratings of the books before you decide to read them, and allow you to see what your friends are reading. Once you dedicate time to reading, you can read from your queue.
7) Keep in touch with your buddies from the past who were book-alcoholics.
Nothing beats the feeling of discussing a book or movie you loved with a close buddy who loved it too!
Unless you are serious about reading, there are plenty of things in your life that would keep you away from reading making months and years pass, quite shockingly. This is the very first step you need to ensure that you have a commitment towards reading regularly.
2) Designate a specific time to read, even if it’s not a lot of time.
Whether it’s 10 minutes before you sleep, or while you are commuting to work in subway, or when you get up in the morning, or when you are waiting in car for someone in the parking, identify the times you would love to catch up with reading.
3) Ensure accessibility.
If you are new school, the ebook readers are the best in carrying thousands of books with you everywhere at any time. If you are old school, keep books at the places you are likely be needed them.
4) Consider audio versions.
Today’s fast pace often requires us to employ our senses together to maximize processing of the information in a more efficient manner. When you are reading a book, you need to be fully engaged with the book at the time. But when you are listening to a book, you can easily do many other things at the same time, like driving, taking a bath, etc. To many, listening to a book doesn’t bring as much of a true feeling as reading a book, but then, one would agree that listening is better than not being able to find time to read!
5) Understand the genres you like.
Once you have understood your commitment to read, find out what genre(s) are you really after. Look at the books you have loved in the past and determine what’s common theme(s). There are a plenty of free websites today (like goodreads), that make it extremely easy to understand what are other books similar to the ones you have liked in the past.
6) Build your reading queue and track progress.
There are very good websites that represent amazing readers’ communities. For example, goodreads allows you to build your reading queue, track reading progress, find similar books, look at reviews and ratings of the books before you decide to read them, and allow you to see what your friends are reading. Once you dedicate time to reading, you can read from your queue.
7) Keep in touch with your buddies from the past who were book-alcoholics.
Nothing beats the feeling of discussing a book or movie you loved with a close buddy who loved it too!
Pawan Mishra
Gatsby and Daisy from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Very few books have demonstrated love, separation, and sacrifice to such deeper levels.
Pawan Mishra
Hi Vadwlas - this is a duplicate of your question I have already answered. Are you able to delete this question that's redundant now? thanks
Pawan Mishra
Hi Vadwlas - that's a great question about the style of a writer. But first about Coinman :)
I started on Coinman in 2003 as a creative writing pursuit resulting from someone's request for a story about his colleague who had a quirk that had plagued the office they worked for. As I started writing, I realized that the subject needed a more elaborate treatment -- it thus turned into a full length novel. It was completed in 2007 but I hadn't planned to publish it until early 2015.
At the center of the novel is a small office in a small city in North India. The office has a mammoth gossiping culture -- where most of the gossips are around invented stories about Coinman, a nonconformist whose peculiar quirk irritates them alike. It seems all fine until they plan to get rid of the issue.
Having spent first 20 years of my life in the small town of Aligarh in UP, I had a privilege of seeing life in a small city very closely. Wandering through every possible narrow street in the city and interacting with every possible type of character opened up a beautiful inner world in my mind that found a way to open itself through this book.
I hope this is enough without revealing the plot much :)
Now to your other question -- but a small disclaimer first. It may be a subject of a good debate and there is no black & white answer -- but this is what I have experienced.
When you start reading, you get influenced a lot by what you are reading. First comes the genre. If you keep reading across genres, over years your true love starts showing -- that is, you keep getting inclined towards certain genre(s) that appeal to you more particularly. Then you end up picking more books in that genre. It's after this point that you start getting influenced by individual styles of authors. You feel like your style is getting modified too -- by way of appreciation for styles of certain authors -- and you are right. The solution is -- keep reading more and more. And in the end, you are so used to reading and looking at authors' styles objectively that you can pretty much see them very isolated from your own.
In short -- when we start reading/ thinking, our style is not formed yet. So when we read something that has extraordinary style, we get overly influenced, and the style may reflect in our writing. But when we keep reading, lot and lot and lot more, the style continuously forms by maturing itself at every point -- eventually to a point where you see it as you see 2+2=4.
Hope that helps.
I started on Coinman in 2003 as a creative writing pursuit resulting from someone's request for a story about his colleague who had a quirk that had plagued the office they worked for. As I started writing, I realized that the subject needed a more elaborate treatment -- it thus turned into a full length novel. It was completed in 2007 but I hadn't planned to publish it until early 2015.
At the center of the novel is a small office in a small city in North India. The office has a mammoth gossiping culture -- where most of the gossips are around invented stories about Coinman, a nonconformist whose peculiar quirk irritates them alike. It seems all fine until they plan to get rid of the issue.
Having spent first 20 years of my life in the small town of Aligarh in UP, I had a privilege of seeing life in a small city very closely. Wandering through every possible narrow street in the city and interacting with every possible type of character opened up a beautiful inner world in my mind that found a way to open itself through this book.
I hope this is enough without revealing the plot much :)
Now to your other question -- but a small disclaimer first. It may be a subject of a good debate and there is no black & white answer -- but this is what I have experienced.
When you start reading, you get influenced a lot by what you are reading. First comes the genre. If you keep reading across genres, over years your true love starts showing -- that is, you keep getting inclined towards certain genre(s) that appeal to you more particularly. Then you end up picking more books in that genre. It's after this point that you start getting influenced by individual styles of authors. You feel like your style is getting modified too -- by way of appreciation for styles of certain authors -- and you are right. The solution is -- keep reading more and more. And in the end, you are so used to reading and looking at authors' styles objectively that you can pretty much see them very isolated from your own.
In short -- when we start reading/ thinking, our style is not formed yet. So when we read something that has extraordinary style, we get overly influenced, and the style may reflect in our writing. But when we keep reading, lot and lot and lot more, the style continuously forms by maturing itself at every point -- eventually to a point where you see it as you see 2+2=4.
Hope that helps.
Pawan Mishra
Yet to find my next book :). I do have a collection of ideas that I am going to be exploring to figure out which one I am going to turn into my next book.
Pawan Mishra
The world around me inspires me to write. During the day to day interactions with the surroundings, when an interesting and creative idea flashes my mind, I note it down in sufficient detail to be able to recall the full thought later. I keep a journal of ideas and allow myself a lot of time to think about them passively so that these ideas constantly remain at the back of my mind. I then start getting sub-ideas related to these ideas, and so one.. Over period of time, I am able to establish a very good understanding of which one of these ideas has enough to offer and decide to start writing. Instead of writing sequentially, I typically write iteratively where the outcome of each iteration is a complete story and the story not only expands with each subsequent iteration, but also undergoes very significant changes.
Pawan Mishra
I am currently taking a break. Only noting down pointers to look at few months down the line and decide what I want to write the next.
Pawan Mishra
Think about what's different about the book you are about to start writing. Do lot of research on topics / ideas detailed in the book. Travel and see different places and meet different people. Make sure you have a way to capture your thoughts at all times - so that they are not lost later. If you are fiction write, read a lot of fiction books with a variety of genres; even if those are very different than the genre you write in. Develop reading interest in philosophy, psychology, and history, if possible. Observe people around you because many of them will provide you with several traits in your characters, if not become one of them. Network immensely with the writer and reader communities to help you write better and promote your book better. Don't get demoralized by negative reviews and discouragements from individual readers -- because those may not be the target readers of your writing. Similarly, don't get overconfident by a few good reviews and always hear the critics with an honest ear.
Pawan Mishra
You can design a whole new world through the setting and the characters in your book--whatever way you think it would please you and your readers. You live several lives through your characters. You can go beyond the reality and can also exaggerate or extrapolate behaviors of people you meet in real life. The absence of the boundaries that we face in our day-to-day life only multiplies this joy!
Pawan Mishra
I write only when new ideas flash in my mind to further the story. Wherever I am, I would make a note of these ideas on my phone notebook in details sufficient to make me remember everything at a later point. While furthering an idea to deeper levels, it's natural to hit a block -- I usually go to gym, start a new book, do research on internet on any sub-topics relevant to the story, watch a good movie, change the setting around: go to events, gatherings, long drives, etc.
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