Some stories shouldn't be told

Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in India who fancied himself a writer. He was a dark and tortured soul, but he wanted to reach out to the world from the vast alone inside him. He created a suitably dark framework for his words to inhabit, and he sent his words out to the world. Woe is us.


This blog has three major strikes against it.

1) Indian emo kid.
2) Writes nothing but fiction.
3) The fiction sucks.

I could stop there, but I won't. He's young, and he wants to write. It's hard for me to hate on the young. They're just so...young. And I remember when I was young, before life beat most of my pretensions of being a serious writer out of me, and so, I will be merciful.

Yes, the impossible is true. This week, Calamity is the mean one, and I'm claiming the honor of "the nice once."

Template-wise, i like this blog. The template is great. I love dark/gothy things, and this template is definitely that. I especially love the little navigation bar at the top with the little moons. I give you kudos just for that.

However, Setu, you've ruined your simple black design with a bunch of crap and gadgets in the sidebar. Purge them from your existence, post haste. They are a major distraction. Add a links box to your navigation bar and put the links elsewhere. Add a drop-down box for your archives. Simplify, simplify, simplify. NOthing is more classically elegant and gothic than black with no flourish. These gadgets are like a string of gaudy plastic beads around the neck of an elegant dark temptress dressed in velvet. Lose the tacky.

The writing...it's overly contrived, far too wordy, and you're trying too hard. Write less, with more feeling. Got it? Do more, with less.

Take this post.

You write:

As I entered the room I saw she had already flat-lined and the doctors were winding up. Now I felt terrible; not for my unanswered questions but for her. I thought I should see her one last time as I didn’t get to do so ever since I crashed in the cab. So, I slowly removed the white cloth from her face. The moment her face was revealed...

See how stilted and awkward the flow is in these sentences? Let me show you what a good editor/writer might do with this.

I walked in, and saw she was dead. The doctors were winding up. Suddenly, the horror [sorrow, tragedy] of her death was real. I wanted to see her one last time, so I slowly removed the white cloth, revealing her face.

When you write, Setu, go back over your work. Try to remove any extraneous words that clutter it up. Make it as clean and to-the-point as you can. Be sparse. You need to do what I've done to every single post.

That's ironic, coming from a wordy fuck like me, but more is NOT better. You don't want your readers tripping over sentences that are as awkward as a thirteen-year-old boy at his first school dance. Your writing should feel, to the reader, as graceful and effortless as ballet. They shouldn't see the work, the craft, behind it. If they do, it spoils the magic.

So, here's my advice to a young writer:

Write your ass off. Do it every day, even if it is just two sentences. Edit, edit, edit. Polish those sentences until they gleam. But mostly? WRITE. Write, and write, and write. Because really? Good writing is mostly about effort and practice.

That's all.

I give you .