Sonia Faleiro’s ‘How I Write: Writers on Their Craft’ is a book about writers, by writers
South Asia Speaks is a recently formed writers’ collective that supports outstanding emerging talent from South Asia, given the precarious conditions of freedom of expression in the region. It offers annual fellowships to promising voices, including disabled writers. In 2022, the initiative was firmed up with a series of masterclasses for the enrolled fellows. Each session featured two authors of South Asian origin — as interviewer and interviewee. ‘How I Write: Writers on Their Craft’, edited by Sonia Faleiro, founder of the mentorship programme, is a collection of these reflective dialogues that took place between acclaimed writers, translators, filmmakers and editors.
In keeping with its manifesto of empowering and representing the shared social experiences of the region, the editor has included conversations of writers from, or with origins in, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and India. The unfolding of related cultural experiences of writers like Pankaj Mishra, Jamil Jan Kochai, Taymour Soomro, VV Ganeshananthan, and 26 others, through these narrative dialogues, intelligently erases parochial political divides off the pages. The edition is not exhaustive, and understandably so, but to the delight of the reader, it engages with sharp South Asian talent that is holding its own in the domain of editing, journalism, literature and publishing.
Even as the title, ‘How I Write’, conveys the core theme of experts sharing trending literary strategies and skills, in no manner does it prepare you for a dive into the gripping life stories of achievers shared with extraordinary candour. Details about struggles with stories/self, research dilemmas, enduring friendships, editorial slashes, networking, livelihood, reviews, and more, shed light on the fast-evolving dynamics of the publishing industry. For instance, literary journalist Mansi Choksi shares how she used Facebook chats, diary entries, photos, videos and court documents to accurately profile the couples in her book ‘Newlyweds’ (Simon and Schuster, 2022). She is open about her ‘post-pub’ chagrin: “I loved the pitching. I loved the private torture of writing. But… the real shocker for me was that I did not get a review in The New York Times.” Having remained low for a few months, she shares, “I became a different version of myself, the book marketing version that is not actually the writer.”
Most writers in the collection are not just storytellers, but also journalists and editors of considerable repute. This ‘omnivorous’, overlapping aspect of their vocations helps them spell out the need for accuracy in journalism, importance of credibility in fiction, role of pitching right to editors, and more. Most contributors also double up as creative writing teachers, and their lessons on survival strategies, for both writers and humans, spring straight from the bone. It makes sense to note Vauhini Vara’s observation: “There’s a funny relationship between writing and financial incentives. I really struggled just finding time to focus on fiction and commit to it, because there’s always a bill to be paid.”
Complex discourse cascades smoothly on the clear texture of the book. For instance, style is best explained by Kamila Shamsie’s simple statement on books: “Often it comes down to opening and reading the first page and something pulls me in.” What lies beneath the birth of a book is unforgettably etched through a metaphor by Suketu Mehta: “Line editing, as anyone who has written a book knows, is like trench warfare. Line by line you have to decide what lives and what dies.” Diasporic author Manjushree Thapa vouches for translating native language texts to resolve the issue of cultural depth: “I learnt how to write in English about my subjects who live in a Nepali-language world, who inhabit another language in their inner lives… through translation.”
The interview with Mira Nair encapsulates artistic nuances and real-world wisdom imbibed while creating world-class cinema; perhaps the platform should consider the possibility of including other art forms of South Asia in its future plans. Readers will cherish the candid, unguarded stories, and aspiring writers will ‘download’ the shared literary expertise for sure.
— The writer teaches at Govt College for Girls, Sector 11, Chandigarh
