gavin's blog

It's been a long time since I've posted, it's now a whole new year and we're well into it!

Why did I stop posting? Just because I got really busy with writing the first draft of ToT, which to cut a long story is a book I'm writing, that's been a labor of love for most of the last decade. Apart from that, the blog wasn't really going anywhere and I kinda just let it slide.

Now it's been a couple of weeks since I finished the first draft and I'm aimlessly pottering around trying to figure out where to go from here. Of course the second draft beckons, but I figure I'm still not done 'flushing the cache'.

A lot of things have happened while I was away from the blog and I really don't want to go through all of them here. Let's just ease into it, okay?

like the one in this article from NY Times. A couple of years back when my wife and I bought our first house - a small 1 bed in a Mumbai suburb - we knocked it down to create a room for myself to write in. My writing went up manifold simply by having a room to myself, a desk that I used in the living room of the apartment we rented earlier was simply not enough in hindsight. But over time I've discovered there are still issues with working from home, especially writing from home, such as this:

‘"When you write at home, there's a lot of distraction," Ms. Parisi said. "You want to go clean out the fridge, or tweeze your eyebrows. But when you go to a space to write, that's what you do."’

I don’t tweeze my eyebrows, but you get the point. Then there’s other people.

‘As Ms. Manghnani, who writes short stories, explained: "If I'm at home working, people don't respect that that much; they call or text or e-mail, or make arrangements to have coffee. But if I'm at a place that sounds legitimate to other people - a library or a writers' room - they don't disturb me as much. No one calls you at the gym and says, 'Lets go have a burger.' "’

What is particularly inspiring about this concept is that in such a space, there are other writers, and the clickety clack of writing could be very inspirational – peer pressure is one of the most catalytic of forces in other occupations, and the isolated nature of writing one of its most difficult aspects – the studio with its amenities and its community is just the thing for me!

‘Ms. Parisi compares writers' rooms to gyms. In both, a large group of people share the same equipment. And, paying for membership helps writers take their commitment to writing seriously, she said, and gets them "off of the couch" and onto the literary StairMaster.’

Hi, y'all,

I hit a bad slump and have been off on all counts the past week or so. I got back from a trip out of town, and felt so disconnected I just couldn't get started at all. I don't know how to explain it, I don't understand it myself. The last couple of days I've been doing the things that I know are good for me - reminding myself who I am, and what I've achieved - refreshing my identity so to speak, and things are looking a tad better. Still feeling the melancholy though.

Many apologies to blog followers for the hiatus, and many thanks for hanging in there.