WRITER

A writer is one who writes. It may be a poem, story, essay, drama, novella, television serial, documentary, scripts for various purposes, copy for advertising, novel, dialogues or any piece of writing meant to be read and understood by readers of some standards and places. Writing is one of fine arts meant for educating and entertaining readers, nominally or extensively. What is written may be short or long. It may or may not be popular. Writers seek pleasure and fulfillment in writing on a wide variety of topics based on their interests, passions and dreams or because of being compelled or commissioned by others for various reasons. I think broadly writers are of two kinds; ghost writers and writers. The creative works of ghost writers get sold to or immorally used by rich and influential folks in a field for some reasons. Writers of all other kinds directly or indirectly get the credit for what they created. The essential qualities of a writer are, generally, command of language, knowledge on the topic to be written, creative excellence, imaginative bent of mind, understanding about the contemporary society and trends, patience, idealism, optimism and rational or irrational love for this world.

I would present the uniqueness of writers, according to my basic understanding, about them.

1. Writers may be considered as ones suffering from multiple personality disorder from a medical point of view. They create various characters, locales and events to express their ideas through them. All those characters have unique identities of their own, which influence and attract readers deeply. One writer assumes the positions of a lover, beloved, singer, musician, warrior, dancer, dreamer, terrorist, rapist, killer, scientist, lawyer, doctor, lunatic, farmer, social reformer, saint, God, devotee, prostitute, visionary, fighter, protester, driver, apostle, priest, man, woman, boy, girl, infant, dog, dove, mosquito, housefly, bacteria, virus, ghost, soul, body, sky, sea, pond, comedian, flower, underground, space, patient, victim, pauper, millionaire, thief, police, lawyer, UFO …what not. He can think like anybody or anything in this world. So, as a writer, he or she has no distinct personality or identity. His or her thoughts keep changing based on the nature of work being created. Thus, writer may be considered as one suffering from different psychological disorders. If we assess writer positively, he is omnipresent and omnipotent. He is everywhere observing your thoughts and behavior. He has immeasurable psychological strength that you cannot defeat him with any weapons as long as he is healthy. As such, he is a miracle living among us simply!

2. They may need special environment to create the best. Some like writing at night, some sitting by sea, some at graveyard, some in a forest, some in journey, some while with a prostitute, some smoking, some listening to music, some dancing, some on bed, some on computer…If there are 100 exceptional writers in a given area, there may be 100 different settings, which encourage them to write in the best way possible for them. It means stimulants are needed, in most of the cases, for writers to write extraordinarily, on their favourite subjects or on those imposed by others in different contexts. I presume that absolute silence at night; complete solitude and extraordinary instrumental music on play somewhere nearby are the ones that elevate writers to the desired plane of writing to a great extent, though we cannot generalize it. Writers do not like anybody or anything disturbing them (including their family members and God) while they are passionately involved in their process of creative writing.

3. They write about those about whom or which you know a little or very well but they write in such a way that you feel completely involved in those characters and developments in a piece of writing so passionately that you forget the real world for those few moments. A great writer is one, who chases you psychologically for days, weeks, months or years, based on the uniqueness and greatness of what he or she wrote creatively. You must feel scared to meet him or her if they come across you suddenly. You must feel a deep sense of love, respect and admiration in their presence. They must have written such works, which could change your thoughts substantially.

4. Many writers do not like even their actual names being known to their readers. They use pen names to hide their real identity of gender, region, language, religion and other aspects of their personality. How silly it is! Many ordinary people also crave identification and appreciation for what they did, however small and negligible it may be. Creators of great works, not desiring to be identified and appreciated so, is a wonder in the domain of writers. They are like bountiful nature from this perspective. Trees give fruits but do not expect appreciation from us. Sun and moon bless us with essential light but never expect something back from us. These writers belong to that world of thoughts and ideals. They want to serve others silently. They hate shallow publicity and popularity.

5. I believe that those writing stories, dialogues and lyrics for feature films and those writing dialogues for television serials are the greatest writers in this world now. They present those characters and dialogues among them so impressively and powerfully that we listen to them like school kids without making noise. There must be love, hero, heroine, villain and some other characters in every feature film but each film must be unique to attract a large base of viewers to cinemas across places. Those, writing for feature films, have got such extraordinary skills in creative writing. We are considering some feature films as masterpieces, partly because of the dialogues and songs also in it. They impress, educate and inspire you so deeply that you can never forget those characters and dialogues between characters. Then, we know about many television serials, which last for one to five years also. They make every single episode very interesting and engrossing and keep you pushing towards anxiously waiting for the following episodes on and on. I know about a number of Telugu television serials, which have these characteristics. I find those characters, scenes, dialogues and twists very interesting and inspiring. I accord the highest degree of greatness, as creative thinkers and writers, on those, who are writing dialogues for such long and enticing television serials in all Indian languages. Those dialogues are extraordinary. They represent the realities in our society powerfully. They have to remember every character, its gradual progression towards the next episodes, for many months and make every episode very interesting to viewers. How many stories and dialogues are they creating regularly to attract millions of television viewers? How many of us can do it? I cannot write that many influential and touching dialogues for so many episodes of a serial. They are masters of creativity and humanity. They are educating and entertaining us extraordinarily. My salutes to all those hundreds of television serial writers, who are attracting viewers in every house, with their words of magic, logic, divinity and excellence. I consider 98% of the present Telugu television serials extraordinary. Each is different from the other. Each is interesting. I don’t know which I should miss and which I should watch because each is superb on its own. Never remark casually that television serials are spoiling the present generations. You can read the Bhagavad Gita only if you don’t like those serials. You are watching them because those artistes are beautiful, those stories are gripping and those dialogues are very touching and inspiring. Appreciate their extraordinary talent and patience if you are sensible. If you are senseless, keep silent. It is more than necessary.

6. Lyricists of feature films are another great race of creative writers. Choose any 100 best films you like in any language you know and identify why you like those films. Imagine the worth of a feature film without songs in it. Dialogue writers and lyricists deserve half of the credit that belongs to any classic feature film because they describe life extraordinarily in those songs and dialogues, in a few relevant but powerful words. I can live happily watching feature films for 50 years. I have that many extraordinary feature films in this world to watch. It means feature films have such great impact on sensible people also. Writers created such masterpieces with their words of immense value over the years. They are wizards of words.

7. Most of the writers desire to be simple in their look. You cannot understand the worth of a writer looking at him or her for a few minutes or for a year continuously. Read what they have written to understand them perfectly. Tell them about anything you know. They write on it within seconds. They impress you with their words. All those words may not have logic and meaning at all but they work like magic on you instantly. This is the power of creative writers, who create powerful words to change society rapidly and radically.

8. All good writers may not be so good at personal level when you observe them closely, if possible. They also have the hardships, weaknesses, demerits and pains like ordinary human beings but they don’t allow the forces of their personal lives to deface the integrity and excellence of their creative written pieces. They command you with their words, often suffering silently in their personal lives. Most of them have high degrees of self-respect. They don’t beg you for food or money even when they are bedridden and are at the verge of death. It is the moral responsibility of a society or country to honor writers proactively because they are partly representatives of God. When everybody is worrying and working for himself or herself, writers worry and write about those issues and themes, which belong and influence humanity at large. They are the royal challengers and dreamers of this world. If they die in poor conditions or pathetic situations, it is a blot on the contemporary civilization and culture. Where writers are neglected and humiliated, there society remains barbaric and tragic. Writers are guides of humanity. Neglecting to read their great writings is like neglecting to understand our mother, siblings, society and country. We suffer and perish soon in such environment. Writers are visionaries and idealists. They think and worry about you when you are playing carelessly and sleeping innocently. Follow their advice to be safe and comfortable always. There are innumerable morals and guidelines in those writings. Read them continuously to become a great human being. A beautiful girl should not desire to sleep in the house of an extraordinary male writer (on spiritual aspects of life) because opposite genders attract each other so powerfully that one of them or both of them fall prey to that temptation. Writers create extraordinary pieces in an elevated state of their minds. They may not maintain that lifestyle and thought process always. There are many evil forces in their minds and bodies. Ordinary human beings should not desire to spend with them always. You cannot witness their power of evil or idealism at times directly. God creates this universe. Writers are his disciples in this world. Both are dangerous now and then.

9. Professional and academic writers write on many themes and topics referring to various other related or unrelated works because academic world needs proofs for everything. Though academic and professional writers also apply much of their originality and creativity in writing books and research papers and works of that order, they don’t get appreciated by larger world as it happens in the case of works written exclusively depending on one’s creativity. One, who writes an extraordinary lyric or a few pages of dialogues for a feature film, drama or documentary, without talking to anybody or referring to any work, gets more appreciated, than one who writes a long book referring to many other works. It means originality and creativity have more value in the field of writing than the ones that are written after research. Many Ph.D. scholars are there in this world but how many of us know about them but we know well about many lyricists and writers because we have more interest in creative writers than research scholars. Innovations and dreams have more value and history than imitation and logic in this world in all ages!

10. Most of us like writers more than scientists and doctors because we enjoy living in beautiful lies and blissful dreams rather than understanding bitter realities professed by scholars and visionaries of scientific order. Writers weave dreams, imaginations, lies and sell them to all like gold and platinum. Otherwise why should all of us see that many feature films and dramas knowing that they are all purely lies and creative machinations of writers? Why should we read so many books of fiction instead of reading books discussing realities and history of our race? The same writers can educate and inspire you so powerfully through portraying reality around you that you may rush to the Himalayas to meditate God, just reading a powerful book, leaving this material world suddenly. Writers are capable of doing anything. They deliver a drop of the sea flowing in them. Take what you like and leave the rest!

11. It is impossible for many writers to say how they became great writers. They don’t know how that creative process occurs and influences them to create masterpieces. They can describe a little part of it but never completely about it. It’s a magic on them. They sit with the idea of writing on one thing but end up with something else completely different. They wish to write 10 pages of content but may not be able to move up to two pages also at times. They plan to write a few words on something but may be pulled to write 100 pages in that direction. Creative process is like a flood. It takes birth somewhere, sometime, somehow in one’s mind and he cannot control how forcefully it flows out and chases him thereafter. It drags him on and on. What he can put in words is just a fraction of it. Much of the creative excellence in a writer remains hidden always. It can never be expressed in words because like soul, creative wonders cannot be made tangible to be seen and felt by mortals. So, never evaluate any writer based on what he could or could not write. He is a mystery to himself. He is not in his control.

12. Some writers are known to many and many are not known. Known writers may not be extraordinary and unknown ones ordinary. In many cases, those that never appeared to us as writers, may be many times superior to the writers we are seeing around us. Various factors and forces hinder many writers from getting public and popular. We should not decide the worth of a writer based on the quantity of works produced by him but their quality. ‘How much influence could they make on a civilization and culture, temporarily or in the long run’ is perhaps the right criterion to assess the worth of a writer. If a book became the cause of a revolution in a country, within weeks or months, it may be considered a classic for that period of time. Great books influence a large number of people so powerfully that they change social and cultural order completely now and then. Some books have such power that they keep inspiring generation after generation for centuries together.

13. If a writer took many months or years to write a book, aiming at an award or prize, never consider such pieces of work as worthy creative works. Creative writers seldom have plans and policies in their lives. They write depending on their strong internal creative force. They write on such subjects and themes, which challenge and chase them but not minding the demands of the contemporary trends and crazy readers. They feel intuitively to write on something, without consulting anybody, or being influenced by a genre or movement of their times.

14. Writers suffer with a burden of innumerable thoughts and imaginations meant for others. They do not appear you cheerfully always with a smile on their face to satisfy you artificially. Various thoughts keep flowing in their psyche regularly. This is why they maintain a serious posture most of the times. They are like fire of thoughts and imaginations. You cannot comprehend them unless you are also an extraordinary writer. Most of the great writers are extraordinary thinkers and visionaries. They can change the order of the world within months if you give political power to them but no civilization ever did so. Criminals and rogues crave political power but not intellectual cream of a society. Writers become leaders only if others invite them sincerely and helplessly. They don’t like to salute everybody for shallow political power because they have tons of self-esteem. They can live happily in a deep forest also, leaving everybody else within seconds but they live among others to somehow change them, through their creative outpouring and idealism. They spend most of their time thinking and worrying for others when all others are treating them as buffoons and eccentric idiots. Only writers have such extraordinary balance of mind in this world. They know about every bitter reality in society and life. They try to console contemporary societies through their beautiful lies because they cannot witness pain around them. They struggle to treat the psychological disorders and demerits of humanity through their words of healing and magic.

15. Even extraordinary writers may be cheated by an innocent boy or a mischievous girl in a village. They are masters of thoughts, imaginations and dreams but not great businessmen. They apply their creativity and intelligence in their writings to serve others greatly but not extensively in their real lives to be safe and secure from the contemporary trends of frauds and crimes. They are like innocent kids in a way. They keep dreaming of a great world always and forget about the bitter realities around them now and then. When they are in that ideal state of thinking and writing, anybody can cheat them within seconds. They live in various phases of creative excellence at various times in their real lives and so they cannot focus on ordinary things of their lives. They may not be able to swim, ride a bicycle, repair a fan or talk with a convent kid perfectly but they can address five lakh people extraordinarily, preparing speech on their own, within minutes. They are very weak in some aspects of their material life but divine and unbelievable in many aspects of their creative process and instant delivery of it.

16. Great souls take lifetimes as writers to educate and entertain sinners and criminals alike and guide them towards lifelessness, eternal bliss and God. Since God cannot take birth as an ordinary human being regularly for the sake of humanity, he sends a bunch of writers regularly into every region. They reach the message of God to humanity ideally and silently. They don’t like your silly, cruel or stupid talk but innocent and helpless aspects of your life and related expressions. They are innocent kids originally and so like to spend with such creatures only beyond their creative process and related output. They like silence more than anything else because they know that all the sounds and dramas in this world are many times worthless than silence. Absolute silence or classic music allows them to transform themselves into the kind of person they want to become based on what they have to write creatively and powerfully. They know truths about human life and this material world completely. So, they listen to everybody silently allowing them to expose their innocence before them. Most of them do not argue with you on any point because they know about their worth and they don’t expect anybody else to certify them specially. If some writer is talking a lot with you, it means he is going to write something related to what you are speaking or that he loves you personally for some reasons but not just like that. They don’t like the company of other humans much, including their family members. They like animals and birds more than humans because they share the qualities of those pure creatures to a great extent. They like originality and innocence more than anything else in this world. They lead balanced lives most of the time. They don’t bother you much even if you bothered them a lot in the past. Most of good writers forgive you as early as possible. They have no much space in their lifetime and psyche to retaliate against anything or anybody in this world. They know that they came here with a scheduled duty. They choose to finish it fast and disappear silently. Most of them prefer such death, which is not known to anybody. They don’t like even their kin and kith shedding a few tears for them while alive or dead. They don’t crave undue recognition and appreciation anywhere, anytime. They accept the orders of God and their Karma silently and patiently. If you want to understand this world better, just be a friend to a great writer or even servant in his abode of living in a forest. Most of the greatest writers are greatest human beings. To put it in other words, they write about those pains and suffering, which they observed closely or lived personally in their lives. Such idealists and thinkers never cheat or harm you.

17. Never marry a great writer if you want to enjoy your personal life. If you love money, he hates it. If you hate pigs and rats, he keeps admiring them. Many writers are strange creatures. Ordinary girls cannot bear with them in real lives. Admire them from distance. Talk with them for a few minutes only. You cannot live happily with them always because they don’t like spending with you always even if you happen to be a Goddess or extraordinary beauty. Their thoughts drag them to different places and states of mind regularly. They don’t and cannot live according to your selfish and narrow-minded timetables. Never struggle to win them through your rational or irrational arguments. If they decide to blast you, they can argue with you for any number of hours or days on any topic. They kill you if you bother them with crazy questions and insignificant doubts for the fun of it. Be simple and innocent while talking with them. They can assess your feelings, emotions and passions within seconds. Do not appreciate them or admire them to satisfy them artificially. They can identify it through looking at your face or words for a few seconds. They hate you once they know about your real character. They like to spend with an innocent prostitute or helpless criminal rather than a snobby millionaire or hypocritical celebrity. They like genuine human beings, wherever they are. If they are spending with others also a lot, in a period of time, it means they are playing an artificial role for the sake of occasion, not because they personally like that company and glitter of decoration. They are masters of wisdom and vision. Win them with your pure love and attachment for them rather than your costly clothes and tons of gold. They love your spiritual beauty and original character. They appreciate your beauty also deeply if it is original and natural. Most of the writers are admirers of beauty, be it in a woman, nature or anything else. They run after original beauty wherever it is because it inspires them directly or indirectly. After coming away from the brilliant beauty of God, they crave material beauty, as the last resort.

18. Most of the writers like music, dance, sculpture, paintings and any other form of art created originally by a talented or dedicated artist. Art, in its pristine form, wherever it is, inspires writers deeply. They may fall in love with other great artists and artistes in most of the cases because one magnet can only assess the worth of another magnet. So, if you want to attract and marry an artist of extraordinary talent, be yourself an artist of that order or extremely innocent and submissive at least. They hate extraordinary intelligence in others because they have plenty of it. They like innocence because they leave it after becoming writers, thinking and worrying for others, silently.

19. Writers can make you a Goddess or prostitute within seconds because they have such high degrees of analytic and logical mind. Behave with them properly if you want their friendship. If you have ten points to argue your point, they can invent 100 points to counter it within seconds, while talking with you. So, you cannot win them applying your logical mind. Creativity is the mother of all sciences, logic, reason and arguments. Remember it.

20. All writers may not know how to promote themselves or their works. Some writers chase popularity and fame investing their money, plans and strategies. Fame and fans chase some original writers, slowly or never. We cannot imagine or assess the worth of a writer based on readers he or she could attract in his or her lifetime. Many great writers and their extraordinary works remain unnoticed for years together or they get buried in the huge womb of unkind time. Some writers do not write anything at all because they think that it is futile from many perspectives in a given age. So, some great writers are those who never write anything. If you want to see their worth as writers, challenge them or announce 10 or 20 crore rupees to the best writings. If it pulls them out, you can witness their creative excellence. They can kill you making you read their one short book also. A book can kill you or save you depending on the power of words put in it. Be careful in choosing and reading books. You must be a challenger to read some books written by masters of craft of writing. They create such works only if time demands but not in ordinary conditions or demands around them. Time produces great writers based on its vital needs always. Ordinary societies and trends create shallow writers to meet temporary needs of that age.  

21. Writers teach the world how to think, live and die to make others happy and comfortable. Since readers never take it seriously to follow those guidelines, prepared by masters of idealism and intelligence, pain and disorders continue in all ages. What can a best teacher do if all his students are criminals and sinners to the core? A writer cannot kill his readers because he is sensitive and ideal. Since writers cannot do it, dictators do it. Writers live with hope and trust in people around them always. They write to help and guide others. Others think that writers are poor creatures in many ways. It is like a rich patient taking his kind doctor like a helpless fellow. Every patient assesses the worth of his family doctor based on how much that doctor served to his family but not thousands of other patients whom the doctor would have treated and healed extraordinarily and ideally.

22. Many writers hate a long life but they continue it, if it chases them on and on, to obey the orders of God but not because they like this material world like other ordinary humans. They hate most of material attractions and occurrences but keep writing about them because God imposed that divine duty on them.

23. Writers suffer a lot internally always because they have many doubts and questions about many things happening and appearing in this world. Nobody can satisfy them with their answers to their endless questions and doubts. Creativity is an offshoot of intense suffering, deep thinking, continuous questioning, rigorous flow of doubts and exploration of mysteries and challenges in this world. Death only can provide peace to a real writer.

24. Writers are magicians of words. They apply their unique type of magic through their words to please, irritate, console or educate you. They may not be experts in any language or subject or field of activities but they know how to teach a lot depending on the little education and vocabulary they have.

Let me write a little on how one can become a writer.

1. To be a great writer, you must have physical and mental health completely. You must have a lot of energy, creativity, patience and deep passion for everything happening and appearing in this world. The more you love the drama on the stage of this world, the more you have passion to describe the characters and incidents in that universal drama taking place before you every day and night, the more you can write and influence others.

2. Every great work must be edited substantially to make it into a masterpiece. Poor language dramatically impacts the worth of any written work. If you are poor at language, get it edited by a professional or artist in that field. Generally, if a writer is poor in a language, which he is using, the editor becomes the second writer. He rewrites most of what you wrote to give it a great shape. It means, you deserve only 50% credit of your book and the rest goes to your editor. Every great editor shares much of the fame a book gets because he contributes greatly in beautifying it, language wise, but very few readers bother to know about the editors of books. Even writers do not write about them in their books. It is a crime and sin being committed by many writers in this world.

3. Journalism is a great branch of creative writing because it daily influences readers. Journalists create extraordinary pieces of writing for dailies, weeklies, monthlies and various other periodicals and books. They study and guide social trends critically. If you want to educate and change society powerfully, study journalism and alert all silently. To become a great journalist, you must be able to love a beggar and millionaire alike because you must study everybody in your familiar society and write about them objectively like the judge of a big court. You must have great degrees of patience, intelligence and honesty to become a great journalist. Some may kill you if you excel as an extraordinary journalist because absolute truth seldom got appreciated by fools and criminals in this world. Ordinary readers and nuts like shallow journalists and their useless writings on rich idiots and garbage.

4. Practice writing on and on. Practice is the best guide to make you a great writer in course of time. Writers also move through many phases of understanding human beings, conditions and trends around them before becoming masters of creative writing. The more you learn about others, the more you can influence them through your writings. Creative writing, which never touches realities of a society and tragedy, never becomes classic in any age.

5. Casual readers are the cruelest citizens of a nation. They may like your piece of writing 100% and would have changed their lives altogether but never write to you. They take writers as nuts. Do not expect hundreds of letters of constructive criticism or appreciation from your casual or serious readers. They may or may not write to you. They think that your job is writing amazingly, struggling hard, to satisfy their fancies always and their role is to read that great book once and throw away. These are characteristics of your target readers. You should be writing for such readers also. It means you should be a perfect practitioner of unconditional love. Keep writing a lot thinking that insensitive and helpless blokes are reading your works, who can/will never write back to you.

6. Schools, colleges and universities cannot make writers because creativity is a gift of God but not a man-made product. You can learn craft of writing but creativity must be what you can think and deliver originally. If you read a few books and generate a cocktail of them, great readers can assess your skills and worth very fast. You must be able to write extraordinarily, living in a forest also alone, without reading any book or talking to others for insights. Creativity is a silent sea of thoughts and imaginations buried in you. If you don’t have it there, you can never become a great writer. You can become a professional writer, cooking a different soup, tasting some soups.

7. A great writer is one who can remain silent and balanced even if a million readers or people are making noise around him or her for something he or she wrote. Writers should have the qualities of saints, God and nature. They must be able to please or punish others differently and patiently. A writer should communicate with his target readers through the excellence of his writings. His book goes anywhere but he cannot go to every reader and place to satisfy or argue with all of them personally. Your written piece is the weapon in your hands. How you apply it depends on how much you have in your treasure stove of creativity and how you can utilize it to become what you want. The more the challenges and challengers around you, the more you can deliver to beat them.

8. Writers can become famous and rich investing their creativity. They can deserve that fame and recognition if they create great pieces of writing on their own and edit them 100% on their own. A writer, being a great editor of his work, is the best formula here to be achieved and followed. Some editors may spoil the beauty of your work because they don’t think like you. Your work is your baby. You should know how to decorate it marvelously. Others may not do it well always. Publishers are a dirty lot. Don’t think that your work is worthless even if a thousand publishers rejected it. They are businessmen but not artists like you. They want money but not social reformation and ideals like you and me. Initially you may need to struggle a lot even if you got a great work of fiction in your hands. Consult kind and generous writers and editors of your knowledge. 

One of them certainly guides you one day. Hope and struggle are important for any artist to reach his target art lovers one day.

I wrote a little about writers in this blog. There is much left out. When time and circumstances chase me, how can I write completely about writings and writers? 

I mean a writer may never have time to write comprehensively about a field, which he knows a little because he has to write a little pieces about many things he knows, not just one word or field of activity. 

A doctor does not have time to cure his headache. 

A tailor does not have time to stitch his clothes stylishly. 

A mother does not have time to take care of her health because she takes care of health of others only always. 

A producer does not find enough time to see his feature film satisfactorily in his lifetime.

A personality development trainer talks a lot in public meetings but says nothing to his wife and children at home because he has no time for it.