BENGALURU : “I have never believed that writing can be taught. I believe writing should be instinctive and natural in the way you think and talk. Writing expresses innermost thoughts with me and my imaginations,” was Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s advice for aspiring writers.
He was sharing his views at the session titled ‘The Tharoors Confabulate’ at the Bangalore Literature Festival, where the MP took part with his sister Smita Tharoor, on Sunday. “My advice to people is to write or learn to write by ‘writing’. Keep writing and keep doing it.
Don’t wait for a publisher. Do a blog and put it up on the internet, send links to your friends and wait for their judgement and seek their honest review and feedback,” Tharoor said, and added, “When I was a kid growing up in India, I was published in every single English magazine in the country.
They were read by parents, family, friends, their friends and peers and I got their feedback from them in real time. I got to know what worked with people what they were particularly delighted with and what they didn’t. That sharpened my craft and I kept writing.” One story of mine was published in a Bombay newspaper and there it picked up, Tharoor said.
He added that if the work is good enough to be read, there will be some publisher somewhere who will see the merit of the work, despite undergoing several rejections, and will publish it.