Prep time: Variable
Serves 1Equipment:
Fountain Pen(s).
Notebook(s).
A digital device capable of intaking and processing words.
Ingredients:
To marinate an idea —
An ounce of iron clad will
A bottle of time
Access to a garden/beach/mountain path
Access to a well stocked library
A spare bottle of time
Chocolates (darker the older you get)
To write the book
30ml ink in a bottle — colour can be your choice
3x Bottles of time
Teaspoons of grit
Copious quantities of tea and coffee
3 cups of self-loathing
2 cups of confidence
Half a cup of grammar
A pinch of an adult refusing to grow up
Instructions:
Marination
Take a walk in the nearest garden/beach/mountain path. Take a sip from the bottle of time.
Take another walk.
Think about how you’ve always wanted to journal.
Fill your fountain pen with ink and pull out a new notebook. Write nothing in it. Or write nothing of importance.
Stretch your brain to remember your dreams right at the beginning of the day. If you have the privilege of waking up next to your partner, make them your verbal diary.
Once you’ve hit upon a string of thought, follow it to the library. Find out more.
Read.
Take another large swig from the bottle of time.
Read some more.
Eat a piece of chocolate.
Stay in the library reading, emptying the second bottle of time and until you have some form of scribbled notes in your notebook/digital device around the topic you’d started thinking about. If the initial idea seems blurry compared to what you’ve unearthed, you’re marinating it right. Otherwise, keep digging.
Once all the time from the bottle is over, you can start with the actual writing. If not, keep that idea in the back of your mind and let it gnaw at you as you take little sips from the bottle. Repeat until empty.
Final fail safe for step 1-10: If all else fails, take a long train/plane (the destination is not important as long as it’s far enough away) with only your notebook, no phone, no music player, no book and allow yourself to be gently pull open the notebook, pick up the fountain pen and pour thoughts and words into the notebook. One of them will turn into an idea worth following.
To write a book
Writing Process
Write.
Write.
Learn the art of making the perfect cup of coffee.
Have a piece of chocolate.
Write.
Write.
Pour in half a cup of self loathing.
Pour in half a cup of confidence.
Allow the two to swirl inside you.
Learn to brew the perfect cup of tea.
Write.
Go for a walk.
Write.
Swig from the bottle of time.
Write.
Make notes. Leave little comments for yourself in the draft.
Repeat steps 1-16 until you naturally reach a point where the words can read the end.
Now take a large swig from the bottle of time and leave the writing alone.
Go read a book.
Watch a movie.
Optional: You can consider marinating another idea for a future book.
Take a swig from the bottle of time and read what you’ve written.
Pour in one cup of self-loathing.
Pour in another cup of confidence and find some treasured sentences you underline and decide to keep going.
Editing process
Begin editing process.
Clean your house.
Clean your room.
Clean the desk you have purchased to write on.
Google chairs that are better suited to writing on that desk.
Remind yourself that all writing is rewriting.
Edit.
Fold in drops of grammar.
Edit.
Edit.
Edit.
Decide everything you’ve written is crap and think about chucking it all in the bin.
Edit.
Edit.
Edit.
Edit.
Think about how you’ve wasted 4 bottles of time on this and how precious they were and could have been used for anything else, anything at all.
Hold yourself in your bed and cry.
Remember when as a child you stayed curled in bed reading books and imagining the glorious worlds and different people.
Imagine how your book could do the same for a different child.
Think about how your book could do the same for your inner child.
Remember you never wanting that inner child to grow up. Remember the promise you made to yourself.
Crawl back to your book.
Edit.
Edit.
Take that final swig from the bottle of time. Buy more bottles, at whatever cost.
Edit.
Write.
Edit.
Write.
Edit.
Write the words “The End.”
Weep in delight.
Your book is now complete.
Read it again.
Make minor changes.
Catch that typo.
Share it with the world.
This is my recipe for writing a book. Please feel free to make alterations as needed, in quantity and quality. Most ingredients can be swapped out for another, all except the bottles of time. Your quantity may vary from mine.
Go, cook!
Until next month,
Keep swirling,
Akshay