Goodreads asked Bhavini K. Desai:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Bhavini K. Desai If you want to be a writer in this world, don’t chase after creative writing courses or ‘how to write in 30 days’ textbooks. That’s not how writers are born, to the best of my knowledge. If you want to become a writer, then there are 3 things you need to do. Only 3 things.

1. Read. Read whatever you can get your hands on. Leaflets, newspapers, Instagram captions, shampoo bottles, hoardings. It would be better if you slowly venture into the land of novels, but even if you don’t, it’s ok. Just find more stories to read — comic strips, graphic novels, plays, movie screenplays… anything. Because when you read, you slowly open your horizons. To new worlds, to different kinds of people, to ideas.

2. Write everyday. Write 2 words or 20 or 20,000 in a day (though the last one is almost impossible, let me know if you do and I’ll send over cake). Writers are made by writing, as simple as that. Your pieces don’t need to have any set shape. Don’t run after structure either. Short story or novel or novella… don’t bother. I started my journey by writing a random story on my mom’s blackberry phone under the blanket when I was supposed to study for my 12th std chemistry test. You might begin yours by writing two-line plots of books you want to write one day.

3. Do not correct your grammar. Yet. This is one of my original sayings — ‘Write in speed, edit at leisure.’ Maybe one day you will see it splashed across Google Images with my photo on it. Then you can claim you read it first. Any way — so yeah, while you are writing, don’t go back every sentence or paragraph to edit. Let there be grammatical mistakes, let there by spellings underlined in reds and blues. You keep going, because once your mind is firing words and ideas at you, there’s a seamless energy flowing. You never know when it will be on a roll again. It’s like collecting rainwater. Let it all come down into your reservoir. Then you have all the time to divert it. Editing is hence best taken up at least 24 hours after you finish a piece. But I usually go back once I am done writing a scene or a section (who said I follow my own rules all the time?)

But in a nutshell, I do adhere to this. Read-write-don’t correct your grammar-thing. It’s worked for me so far, so try it for a week and let me know if it works for you too.

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