Blog | Kadambari
24 May, 2024| Kadambari
Hello, this is just a short post to announce that all future essays written for Kadambari will be posted on my blog. I will keep up this archive for those who found the book through Bear, but I will not make any other updates here.| Kadambari
There are so many guides on becoming a freelance writer online that I almost don’t want to write this one. But I will, because I’ve read hundreds of those guides and in none of them—at least as far as I can remember—I found the lessons that I’ve learned over the last year and a half as a freelancer.| Kadambari
I used to be a very organized person. That's not a sad statement, because since last year I've learned that getting organized can be a huge distraction. Most people aren't organized, and they're mostly doing fine. But I can't speak on their behalf. What I know is that organising feels good, but isn't really useful in most cases to get the work done. Writing is somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. You don't need to be an organized person to be a writer--indeed, some prefer disorganization...| Kadambari
Many people use writing for catharsis. They do it privately, in their journals, and never look at it again. Or they make art out of their suffering, and share it with others in the hopes that their readers will find comfort in their work. Writing about pain and suffering is a way to come to terms with it, make sense of what happened, understand yourself, and even convey to others what it is to be stigmatised, isolated, mistreated by systematic forces. It brings people together; it can act as ...| Kadambari
Writing Without Thinking| Kadambari
In the previous essay, I discussed my method for curating a list of literary magazines that I enjoy reading and would love to submit my stories to. In this one, we'll discuss how to read those magazines not as a reader, but as a writer.| Kadambari
In a previous essay, I wrote that you do not need to know what kind of a writer you are or want to be, and that it’s okay if your goals change. In retrospect, I realised that in an attempt to accommodate all kinds of writers and goals, I did not directly speak to the writers--like my own 16-year-old self--who did know what they wanted from their writing: I wanted to write a book of sad short stories once I graduated college with a degree in Creative Writing, but before that, I wanted to be ...| Kadambari
Even when we start very young, such as at age 12 or 15, we come to writing with a rich inner life. We have had so many thoughts, ideas, fantasies, and opinions. When we first start writing, what we're doing is practicing giving a tangible form to those thoughts. You can see your inner voice on the page. You're used to talking to yourself inside your head, but now that voice is visible to you and it can talk to others. This will feel embarrassing at times, because this voice makes complete sen...| Kadambari
This is a story. Offered in the hope it intrigues or amuses. It is not a template. I don’t think there are templates for the creative process, beyond the very basic, obvious one: if you don’t do it, it won’t get done. Putting in the hours. Trudging up the hill, metaphorically, when the cool people are still dancing.| Kadambari
You are reading the first draft of what I'm calling a book. And I'm calling it that because for years I wanted to write one, except that I didn't want to wri...| Kadambari
On her blog, Maggie Appleton explains the benefits of specifying, at the beginning of a piece of writing, who the is: it "free[s] both of us [the reader and...| Kadambari
