Neha's Notebook

  The best place to be in…   The moment when you feel like you have nothing to write, is the very moment you should start writing, because this “nothing” is the gap where a treasure trove of words are awaiting for you to wake them up so they’ll tell you about their pains and stories, and like a diligent transcriber, you’ll take the dictation and copy their dialogues and monologues and whisperings and sweet nothings in your notebook.   This “nothing” is the best place to be in. Within the inky abyss of this nothing-ness lays asleep a colony of creepy little monsters, also known as “words.” Some of these monsters had been sleeping in this n-cave for, probably the past billion years. Nobody ever tried to wake them up, partly because they had no idea that they even existed. It wasn’t until these crazy person called “writers” finally slumped down on their desks with their notebooks or laptops perched in front of them.   For at least half-an-hour, the writer gazed at the b...

Whenever someone asks me what I do, I tell them I work as a creative writer. But when I am sitting alone in my room, my rolling gaze falls upon the heaps of papers and notebooks lying scattered, and I am forced to wonder whether I am really a writer.  No matter how many paintings you have created, unless you put out an exhibition to showcase them, how the world is going to know that you are a painter. And I, unbelievingly, have been doing the same mistake, over and over again. Just cramming up my laptop folders with documents, stuffing my notebooks with jottings and notes that would probably never be read, unless I am dead and my greedy grandchildren sell my stuff to become billionaires. Am I dependent on my grandchildren to tell the world that I am a writer and I love words and my mind is constantly churning out weird, bizarre stories? Maybe I am. I was. I like to call it “hesocrastination,” a portmanteau of hesitation and procrastination I created from an online tool. Interne...

#1  Build a dictionary/encyclopedia on Youtube #2  Create your own thesaurus and style guide for your occupation or profession #3  Make Your Personal Question Bank – A glossary of various types of questions #4  Build Your Personal Brand QR Code #5 Don't add Page Numbers in Contents while self publishing books on Amazon [To prevent poor formatting] #6  Create an editorial calendar for yourself #7  Make a folder for research material while content writing #8  Make a quote calendar – a quote for a day #9  Make a video glossary of your favourite writing project #10     Make checkerboards and grids for tracking project days [project goal grid] #11     Make a collection of creative writing phrases #12     Divide your time between ‘Research Time’, and ‘Writing Time’. Further divide your Writing Time between various categories of writing – freelance, short story, free writing, etc. #13     Craft...

Hello! In the previous post, I published the review piece for the book ‘Stephen King on Writing’ , which I had been reading lately and finished quite a few days ago.  Followed by the book review, in this article I intend to elaborate the writing lessons I’ve learned and extracted from this book, as well as some of the tips & ideas shared by Mr. Stephen King herein. With this, let’s move forward and read on these! #1  WRITE WITH THE DOOR CLOSED. REWRITE WITH DOOR OPEN. Typically, the aim of initial freewriting process is to get the idea/story down on the paper (or document). Mr. King writes, that ideally this process should be carried out by blocking out the world, which represents the part of us which is responsible for critiquing or rationalizing things, name it intellect. Bringing in the voice of logic and intellect too early and too soon in our writing, carries with it the tendency to spoil the fruit of the story. A story, after all, is something which origina...