Author's Diction~Dr. Vipin Behari Goyal: creative writing

Showing posts with label creative writing. Show all posts

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Echo Of Silence

Learn to Hear The Voice of Silence

The Other I

Solitude and silence are the virtues created by freedom of choice, since both could be either ‘Outer’ or ‘Inner’. They are the great source of creativity. Silence endowed with the quality of echo, is superior. It is the voice of your consolidated Karma of this and all your past births. It talks only after thick trust of intimacy. It connects you to the stream of consciousness formatted by impressions of all previous births. Every person is a product of all decisions taken, but also all decisions that he did not take when choices was there. Indecision is no decision, just as having no principle is not a principle. The situations were resolved by the notion of right and wrong or good and evil. What is universally accepted is not necessarily a truth or reality. In a settlement of addicts, you cannot talk sense, lest you will be labeled as insane. If you fancy -isms and ideologies you are an addict, you first have to go for a cure and what could be better medicine than silence and solitude.

The prism of the -ism dissects the ray of light which is truth. Truth in its absolute form is indivisible. So all -isms and ideologies are only contemporary truth that could prove wrong with the passage of time. The time-tested literature becomes immortal. The classification of genre is only a convenience; truth has no servitude to the finity. Nor is it revealed by an explosion or after a blind turn. Truth is veiled by a translucent silk curtain that you were always afraid to touch. Curiosity makes you anxious but does not infuse dare. By a sudden stroke of luck, by a minor incident, by a blow of air or a wave in the ocean the curtain is removed and the truth is exposed to you. It is a surprise that you were not shocked, but felt blissful. The Christ has arrived, the Krishna is born, and the Prophet Muhammad has heard Gabriel. The writer starts his walk, on such a long journey.

Ordinary becomes extraordinary for a writer. Truth is revealed to him by an ordinary incidence, so he explores the phenomenon of simple and ordinary things. He can identify that pattern of ideas, thoughts and actions that reveal in certain emotions. The characters created by an enlightened writer are either Whole or Fragmented. They could never be classified as round and flat or type and individual. A character could be whole in the eyes of Humanism while Fragmented when seen from the eyes of Realism. The ‘Whole’ existence would create trouble in the mind of existentialist, who has already split the theory so many times that by any further split in the theory, it would lose its existence.

The ‘I’ is in perpetual Love-Hate relationship with the ‘Other I’. When I is silent the Other I speaks and it is thus an ‘Echo of Silence’. The Other ‘I’ is a fanatic pursuer of truth. The simple language sounds satirical when it has an element of truth. The Other I fill the void created by the existence of I. The ‘Other I’ is irrational, no logic can convince him, if he decides to go follow the dictum of his heart. Permit him that Space and see how he transcendences the boundary of Time, and brings timeless jewel for you from the womb of the Unborn.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Pulp fiction Versus Kerosene literature

Is Pulp Fiction Lovable ?

The pulp fiction was a term used in America in the early years of the twentieth century for cheap magazines and books sold on book stands. The covers were glamorous but the cheap pulp paper was used for printing the story and articles. The stories were action packed and romance was at its zenith in such books. Such books were popular with young adults. Some writers of pulp fiction later became celebrities and wrote popular fiction in literary style. After world war two the paper became very costly and such books slowly disappeared from the market. Later with the advent of Television the market of such books became obsolete and it became a talk of a bygone era.

Almost the same type of books and magazines were popular in India also during the same time till in sixties Hind Pocket Books came out with one rupee books. The pulp fiction was called “Ghasleti Sahitya” in India, which meant Kerosene Literature. It was called so, because in the opinion of bourgeois it was stinky as kerosene , and it could even stink the mind of readers. Such books were sold wrapped up in yellow foil so that curious bystanders do not pick up and turn the pages. Anonymous became the synonym of Mastram. Many bestselling authors of Hindi emerged from a community of readers and writers of these books.

During all these years great literature was written all over the world, especially in Europe, e.g. F. Scott Fitzgerald, E. M. Forster, Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, W. Somerset Maugham, Albert Camus, Joseph Conrad, D .H. Lawrence, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, Sinclair Lewis, Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Andre Gide, Rudyard Kipling, Hermann Hesse, Ayn Rand, Jean Paul Sartre etc. wrote wonderful books which are categorized as “Classic Literature”.

On the other hand in Hindi, the famous authors who created parallel classical literature during the same period were Bhishma Sahni, Dushyant Kumar, Devkinandan Khatri, Dharamvir Bharti, Hajari Prasad Dwivedi, Jainendra Kumar, Kamleshwar, Kedarnath Agarwal, Krishna Sobati, Mannu Bhandari, Mohan Rakesh, Nagarjun, Suryakant Tripathi Nirala, Phanishwar Nath Renu, Padma Sachdeva, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Sachchidananda Vatsyayan, Vishnu Prabhakar, Yashpal etc. .

It looks like best literature in Hindi and English was written during the first half of the twentieth century when pulp fiction and kerosene literature was also equally or rather more popular if we decide the popularity by sale. Thousands of copies of cheap (in price) detective novels by Ved Prakash Sharma, Surendra Mohan Pathak and Keshav Pandit were sold on the date of release. They were James Hadley Chase, Frederick Forsyth and Earl Stanley Gardner of India.

What attracted people to these books? There was no TV, Video games, Internet and other numerous means of entertainment. Middle class, half educated youth was attracted by pulp fiction as bees are attracted by nectar. These books were sold in 25 Paisa which was called Chawanni or a quarter of a rupee. Later everything that was cheap or vulgar was called “chawanna”. That was the only source of entertainment where you can extract the full value of your money provided you can read. In those days the rate of literacy (which meant people who could read and write their name) was hardly ten percent, so reading a book was a status symbol and folks were impressed by it. Especially because this type of fiction provided enough scope for imagination.

If for a moment we get rid off of our English mania, the Hindi literature created during the first half of the past century was much superior to or at least at par with literature created in Europe, and the USSR. USA at that time was more busy in the economic growth of the country.

This is high time we accept the work of all authors and honor the talent of creative writing ignoring what is being written, if it is popular amongst the masses.

© Vipin Behari Goyal
Advocate, Rajasthan High Court, Jodhpur, India

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Little madness is necessary

Tips for Writers

Any creative artist cannot lead a life of normal human being. Authors are no exception. They are branded as whimsical, erratic, cynic, crazy or mad by society. Actually the faculties of mind that Author uses like imagination, minute observation, narration, memory are just opposite to what is required to lead a normal life. So if you have received any of these medals from society, be sure that you are already on the path of creativity.

If coachman is lashing the horse of the cart, how many would embrace the neck of the horse and weep in compassion for him as Nietzsche did.

Remember:

“Only a good man can write a good book”

It is not necessary that society acknowledge you as good man. The society is too mean for that, you judge yourself conscientiously. Put a hand on your heart and review your life, if you have lived your life by conscience you could be a powerful author.

A powerful author would be remembered till the end of civilization. Do you think Dante, Victor Hugo and Tolstoy would ever become obsolete? Even if one does not reach to that height, he should at least aspire for that.

Life of a normal man does not make any story. Author cannot repeat the story told by someone else. He would add his own perspectives and would kill the core of the story. Main thing is to feel the pain of the sufferer and express the compassion without a care about what people would say about you.

Keep in mind you have to:

“Search for the nucleus of society”

If so far you have written boy-meets-girl types of stories, now try something different. Twenty five years back when I thought I have written a very good story, I took it to a great author of our region Vijay Dan Detha who received many literary awards. After reading he asked where the nucleus of the story is.

I was astounded. From that day I began my search and found that every individual, every society and every culture has a nucleus. They are all around us. Either we don’t see or we ignore. The boy does meet a girl in the society but that is what everybody else also sees. An author has to see and express it with an angle others might have overlooked.

Next time when you write a story check if it has nucleus or not?

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