“Keep It Simple, Silly”: A Life’s Worth of Writing Advice

“Keep It Simple, Silly”: A Life’s Worth of Writing Advice

After writing a book, most writers get delirious thinking of the glamourous launch party; they don’t realise that they will soon have to face some very tricky questions. I was prepared for all of this with some smart, snappy answers. Although I felt like I had scaled a mountain, the anxiety of producing my next work soon consumed me. That is, until I realised, the only way to write is to keep it simple.
“What You Say is Not as Important as the Bookcase Behind You”

“What You Say is Not as Important as the Bookcase Behind You”

In the age of Zoom, a curated book collection is what defines your “shelf-worth”. You must make sure a few good titles can be read clearly – A Hundred Years of Solitude (by either Kafka or Garcia Marquez, I forget who), Barack Obama’s A Promised Land. Do take good printouts after downloading these covers from the internet and paste them over your volumes of ribald Khushwant Singh’s Joke Books.