‘Take Charge of Your Own Book’: Writing a Personal God
By Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) | March 20, 2015 |
Image from the book trailer for Amish Tripathi’s The Shiva Trilogy
‘One of those guys who refused to enter temples’
Bear with me, I want to quote an author to you at a little length:
My books are historicals. They’re set in the India of 4,000 years ago…My books are based on a premise that Lord Shiva was a real historical man, who lived 4,000 years ago, and his grand adventures gave rise to the myth of the god. So I’ve written on a Hindu god. But I was an atheist, eight or nine years ago. Today, I’m a very devoted Shiva worshipper. But eight or nine years ago, I was a committed atheist. I was one of those guys who refused to enter temples. It’s been a really long and strange journey.
Provocations graphic by Liam Walsh
On Wednesday, the London Book Fair’s opening conference — called Publishing for Digital Minds (#PDMC15) — held an advance event. Conference Director Orna O’Brien and her staff in London, supported by Midas PR’s Chris McCrudden, staged an eight-hour series of events, a “Virtual Stream” that included events via Google Hangout, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. Here’s the full list of events. The day started at 5 a.m. Eastern and was finished by 1 p.m.
I was asked to handle the 90-minute India segment on Twitter. We started with a 45-minute interview with Hachette India’s Managing Director Thomas Abraham and with Penguin Random House India’s Children’s Publisher Hemali Sodhi. These were terrific interviewees, beautifully prepared, firing off tantalizing details of one of the most vast and complex books markets on Earth.
- Sodhi, for example, knew precisely how to tell me the reach of the young readers’ market in India: “More than half our population,” she said, “is under 25 years old.”
- And Abraham nailed the promise of mobile reading on smartphones in India: “Look at the potential, Porter: The number of telephone subscribers in India rose to 970.97 million at the end of December 2014.”
I would interview Sodhi and Abraham again in a heartbeat. They were efficient, personable, fascinating, and they were all that in what is actually a difficult format, the live Twitter interview with two simultaneous guests and a host.
But it was yet another of those nearly-one-billion Indian phone subscribers whose chat with me was even more compelling. And for a very different reason. At its heart — maybe in his heart — lies my provocation for you today.
‘An earthy and frankly rather cool God’
Amish Tripathi
The second 45-minute segment of my India section was a Twitter interview with an Indian author named Amish Tripathi. If you’re Indian, you know him simply as Amish. On Twitter, he is @AuthorAmish with more than 90,000 followers and not even 5,000 tweets on record. I probably made him tweet more than he’s ever done in 45 minutes.
I want to bullet out for you the technical facts of this man’s writerly success quickly, so you have the context.
- Amish Tripathi is 40, based in Mumbai, married and a father.
- He has three books to his name: The Immortals of Meluha, The Secret of the Nagas, The Oath of the Vayuputras.
- These three books form his Shiva Trilogy. The first book in his new Ram Chandra series is to be out later this year, The Scion of Ikshvaku.
- The Shiva Trilogy has sold more than 2.2 million copies, bringing in more than US$9.4 million to date.
- Film projects are in the works on The Shiva Trilogy both in India and in Hollywood.
Tripathi and his agent self-published his first book, The Immortals of Meluha. Reports say it was rejected as many as 40 times by publishers. “I stopped counting after 20,” he tells me in our interview. With a lot of inventive presentational marketing — high-end physical publication of a sample chapter given away free in bookstores, etc. — Tripathi and his agent leveraged the 5,000 self-published copies enough to draw the eye of the publisher Westland, which now has bragging rights on a very smart move.
For the record, Tripathi isn’t really a self-publishing story, by which I mean he’s not about self-publishing and doesn’t want to be. Self-publishing 5,000 copies to draw the attention he needed to Book 1 with some aggressive, smart marketing was the way to what he wanted, a contract: the means, not the end. This is something I wish more of our authors today could consider instead of falling into the distraction of self-publishing as some sort of crusade. But that’s for another provocation. Suffice it to say that when I referred to his self-publishing phase, he made it clear that it was just that: a phase:
I didn’t choose self-pub. Just made a virtue out of necessity! :) But now I have a proper publisher.
In fact, he doesn’t seem to feel that his marketing efforts are unusual. While some of our culture’s authors can fill whole trilogies of their own with lamentations about disappointing marketing efforts from publishers, Tripathi’s resopnse is as close as you can come to executing a shrug on Twitter when asked about marketing his books:
Of course. You shouldn’t leave it to publishers. You must take charge of your own book.
Why don’t we just have that printed on every writers’ conference name-tag this year? It would save us a lot of weepy chorales of Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.
The Shiva Trilogy books by Amish Tripathi
‘God has been kind’
Beyond all this, the essential elements of an outlier success story in publishing, there’s another aspect to Tripathi’s experience I’d come across in my research and was eager to ask him about.
I’d seen a television anchor jump onto this point with Tripathi: “You’re always thanking God, Amish, always saying that God has been kind.”
Tripathi is the grandson of a Sanskrit scholar, a pandit who lived in the holy city of Benares or Varanesi — said to have been the favorite city of Shiva. Although Tripathi says he was an atheist for some time, his work on his retelling of the Shiva mythology has left him an adamant believer in what he describes as a discovery that “rationalism and dharma (one’s moral duty) can go hand-in-hand.”
How cynical we may have become. In his 11-minute INKtalk appearance (a series of very TED-like talks), I found myself watching for some sign that his talk of faith connected to these novels might be part of the show. I don’t find such a sign. O, me of little faith.
Granted, Tripathi’s books are unapologetically melodramatic, their scenes and situations are sensual, apocalyptic. His video trailers are roiling-cloud affairs, thundering with primal drumming that could make the Kodo ensemble blush. To Western eyes, many Indian aesthetic traditions seem over the top, saturated in TechniColor. And for heaven’s sake (sorry), his subject matter is mythological grandeur. These tales may seem strange and exotic to us, but if we see Zeus toss a lighting bolt in a film or read of it in our Edith Hamilton, we’re fine with some sizzle and smoke. Look past the precise symbols of one religious lexicon and you find easily recognizable aspirations, hopes, fears…faith.
From this morning’s (March 20) eclipse, as shot by Vanessa Knipe and posted on Twitter
“I’m certainly a believer,” Tripathi told me when I asked him. This guy who was told by his wife to hire a driver so he could spend his commute to work writing was becoming his own first convert “in the backseat of my car.”
And why Shiva, destroyer of evil, a man who became a god? In Twitter to me, Tripathi answered without missing a beat. And notice his capitalizations — they remind me of old-church literature in US Protestantism:
Lord Shiva is an earthy and frankly rather cool God, Who is especially popular with the youth…I’m a rebellious person by nature. Lord Shiva is the ideal God for someone like me (no disrespect to other Gods).
And as he has worked his way through the trilogy and its big, big reception, Tripathi told me, he has seen in India’s readership something new and glowing:
Oh, answering that is difficult in 140 characters. But I guess I can say that India is changing. Our confidence is rising once again. So there is a greater interest in stories rooted in our culture and country.
His own prospects rising with that cultural lift, Tripathi was upbeat, cordial, fun. When I couldn’t pin him down on the publication date for the forthcoming The Scion of Ikshvaku, I reminded him of George R.R. Martin, struggling to stay ahead of the racing HBO serial, and Tripathi came back:
:) I’m writing it. And I promise that it WILL release this year! Also, I’m waiting for @GeorgeRRMartin’s next!
[pullquote]What I think I saw and heard in Amish Tripathi is something we could use more of in today’s literature of all genres: personal commitment, purpose, intent. What may appear in the film adaptations as fantasy-worlds entertainment — although no doubt of great vigor and scale — is coming from a place deeper than so much of the fiction output that chokes our markets today. [/pullquote]
All the while, followers on Twitter were gathering in the stream, that amazing murmur that composer Nico Muhly captures with scary beauty in his opera Two Boys. The crowd that Tripathi draws, I learned, wants to tell you about tolerance. These people spoke in quick, deferential tweets about being sure they allowed others to worship as they wanted, not to impose one belief on another. “@AuthorAmish is one of the better minds to make sense of chaos here in India,” one young man told me. A woman told me that she’d found his story so inspiring that “I even hired the same marketing agency” as his. “I’m understanding the basic premise of spiritual evolution through Karma,” another told me, “grateful to Shiva Trilogy for this insight.” Another: “It is time we learnt to celebrate the diversity in various cultures and rejoice in it.”
Where were they getting these things? Almost simultaneously, Tripathi was saying to me:
Nothing wrong with devotion to your God. What is wrong is when you attack another person’s God.
His stories “come to me in bits and pieces,” Tripathi told me, “and not always in a structured manner.”
I’ve learnt to trust the flow and just go with it. I’m an instinctive writer. I just follow the story the way it comes to me. It’s actually quite easy that way.
What I think I saw and heard in Amish Tripathi is something we could use more of in today’s literature of all genres: personal commitment, purpose, intent. What may appear in the film adaptations as fantasy-worlds entertainment — although no doubt of great vigor and scale — is coming from a place deeper than so much of the fiction output that chokes our markets today. Somehow not what we think of as religious fiction, Tripathi is writing something more subtle: faith-informed fiction. He’s in touch with something enviably unifying for him right now. That’s a kind of grace we don’t see a lot when people are obsessing over book sales and self-publishing exclusivity and the cost of editing.
[pullquote]I would continue to write even if my books remained only in my laptop. And that is actually a wonderful place to be. [/pullquote]
Here he is again from the INKtalk commentary:
What am I trying to get across?…My point is that if you listen to your soul’s advice and you discover your life’s purpose, success or failure actually ceases to matter…Success was a prerequisite for me to like my banking career…In my writing career, my story is completely different. If somebody told me that, “Your books will be super-flops”…would I still be happy? The honest answer is yes. Success or failure was irrelevant in loving my writing career…I would continue to write even if my books remained only in my laptop. And that is actually a wonderful place to be. Where the journey itself becomes a place of joy. And the destination doesn’t matter.
How honestly can we, in such money-driven cultures as we operate today, find a sense of completion if no market ever looks our way? Many, maybe most, of our writers will have this happen. Because there aren’t enough readers and there is already more content than anyone can accommodate. Would Tripathi himself be able to say this if he had sold 25 copies, not 2.2 million?
At the end of our interview he said to me:
And may all the Gods (or the Universe if you are an atheist) bless you.
And you know what? I had a better day.
@Porter_Anderson is a fellow of the National Critics Institute. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, the international news medium of Frankfurt Book Fair. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for trade and independent authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman. Priors: The Bookseller‘s The FutureBook in London, CNN, CNN.com and CNN International–as well as the Village Voice, Dallas Times Herald, and the United Nations’ WFP in Rome. is a recipient of London Book Fair’s International Excellence Award for Trade Press Journalist of the Year. PorterAndersonMedia.com
Nicely conducted, Porter. Something Amish said at the end stuck out for me:
Where the journey itself becomes a place of joy
I think this is not only where “real writers” dwell, but is also the key to writing that has the best chance to connect with readers and motivate them to part with discretionary lettuce. While there is no lack of content out there, this kind of writing is rare, and the writers who delivers it time after time will tend to rise. Some will hit the stratosphere, while the greater portion will find a nice, flowing current in the river of added income.
So yes, I’d still write, even if I had to print and staple 10 copies at FedEx and sell them to my family for a buck apiece.
I love that Mr. Tripathi used self-publishing in such a conscious and deliberate way. Its refreshing, and it worked. I haven’t read the books yet, but I plan to because I am intrigued by the fact that, as an atheist, he was compelled to write about a God. How cool is that? A story came and tapped him on the shoulder. A story that not only changed him but has started an important conversation. Good stories do that. Change us, make us think, talk and listen in a way we didn’t do before we read them. So however a story such as this gets out into the collective consciousness is fine by me.
In our culture, everything is a business. But I think for (most) writers there has to be a point of separation. Money can’t trump the the goal of telling the story. There’s a place where the two meet, of course. But a story has to happen first. As to your question about finding ‘a sense of completion’, I guess that would depend on our individual definition of ‘complete’. For me, right now, that would mean getting the story that has tapped me on the shoulder onto the page in its finest incarnation. After that, I’m sure the definition will change.
Hi, Susan,
Thank you for reading and commenting.
Yes, I think that you’re putting your finger on the value of Amish Tripathi’s approach — the deliberate, purposeful use of self-publishing as a correct means to an important end. This is far more valuable an election to self-publish, in my mind, than the sort of community-driven boosterism that seems to drive so many self-publishers. Any means of publication must be a means to an end. And once Tripathi had spotted the value of what he was after, he knew to use self-publishing, he knew to use it as a means, and not confuse it as the end, which so many seem to be doing in our culture today.
I certainly agree with you on the genius of an atheist approach to a topic of faith (I’m a minister’s son and have moved the opposite direction, from faith to non-faith). But I’m not, actually, surprised at this element of Tripathi’s story, just admiring. It is, normally, atheists, I find who feel and understand most keenly what they cannot believe. They have an understanding of the beauty they’d love to worship far beyond the easy-acceptors,.
It’s great to see Tripathi’s progress and to benefit from the friendly candor of his thoughts, isn’t it?
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hey, Jim,
Exactly, that “journey” language is terribly good, I agree, and your understanding of it is spot-on.
This kind of writing really is rare and, if anything, it makes me remember that when we find something like this, it’s important to hold it up for people to see, offer it to them so that it can find its best audience. If anything, Amish’s huge success backs you up on the idea that this level of personal investment does “tend to rise.” And on the other hand, the plethora of lesser stuff is going to continue to create more and more of a challenge. Lack of time, lack of patience, and this growing mountain of material. We have to take heart from the fact that in a market as big as India, Amish’ work is finding its way — such sales numbers are extremely rare in that setting, making this all the more impressive.
Thanks again for jumping in and if you end up at FedEx, at least charge $1.50 for each copy. :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Fascinating, Porter! I wish I’d known of the Twitter event in order to follow it. I’m actually pursuing the Indian market now for my book, Faint Promise of Rain, with which I know you are familiar. (And as you know, too, I took a somewhat unconventional route to getting it published here in the US.) It’s a huge, booming, complex and enticing market. But I think it baffles a lot of US-based foreign rights agents. I’m excited about the possibilities, and I loved reading this piece. Thanks!
Hi, Anjali!
Sorry you weren’t with us for the Virtual Stream on Wednesday, it was fascinating in terms of several international markets, not just India, as a matter of fact.
Yes, your sense of the complexity and confusions of the Indian market is quite strong. Book pricing, for example, is generally lower and very large sales numbers like Amish Tripathi’s are not the norm. (“Blockbuster” can mean very different things in different parts of the world.)
Thanks for reading and commenting!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I can really relate to this, Porter. Thank you for the provocation this morning. Through five, almost six, large manuscripts, I’ve explored the reconciliation of rationalism and choice/free-will with “duty” and externally imposed expectation and dogma. Although they are not religious per se, the imposition and acceptance of religion, and finding one’s own spiritualism within or outside of a religious framework, are central to a thematic thread that runs throughout the series.
I don’t suppose I’d spend this much time and effort on such themes if I wasn’t grappling with them myself. I’ve read the final quoted paragraph from Amish several times now. I love what he’s saying about finding one’s purpose, and how that eclipses success/failure. And one thing’s for sure – I’m not in this for the money. Ten years without a nickel proves that. I’ve already done my time chasing nickels. But when he spoke of his books being flops and still finding satisfaction, that’s where I still struggle. In considering it, I suppose I can substitute money with validation as the external I need to release to find that kind of peace.
But I still wonder. I still enjoy the drive provided by finding my way to connection. I don’t want to get my “connection” and “validation” wires crossed as I strive. So I’ve got to find the current that energizes my forward momentum. I suspect it’s going to be a sort of alternating current (thanks, Tesla!).
Anyway, well done, Porter. You’ve certainly provoked some unboxed thinking over here.
Hey, Vaughn,
Thanks for this, one of your most thoughtful comments, in my experience.
As you can tell in my piece — I grace this in my questions at the end — I think it’s not wrong but right of us to question, with nothing but admiration for Amish, whether he would feel so at peace about success vs. failure if he had met with what the world, at least, would define as failure? We certainly can tell that a successful delivery of his first book into the world was important to him, in the fact that he turned to self-publishing to try to make it happen. I don’t think he’d deny that he was driven, himself, by some idea of that holding a component of success for him. Happily it went well. It might have gone the other way.
But for our purposes, I think you’re putting your finger on a very difficult part of all this for those of us still walking toward “success” (by whatever defininition). More briefly: Isn’t it awfully easy for the successful to say that success doesn’t matter?
Maybe this is why it’s so compelling that I don’t doubt a word that Amish Tripathi says to us. I think his experience is authentic, which is why I find it so intriguing. The grandson of a holy man, himself, he gets around an awful lot of sophisticated religious-caca detectors of my own, as the son of another holy man. I know a lot more more faith-based sleight-of-mind tricks than most and am a pretty seasoned sampler of theological snake oil.
Tripathi looks to me like someone working in exactly the context he’s describing to us. And while many of us can’t come along in the same belief structure that he inhabits and is devising so poetically, he generates a sort of field of possibility at a time when this kind of opening is rare — he seems to hold out the chance to all of us that we could, if we wanted, engage at the faith-fueled level in our writings. That is too scary a thought for many and too demanding a task for most. But for those of us who would like to function from a point of faith — in everything from a gorgeous athletic god (Tripathi never fails to remind us that Shiva is a great dancer!) to some less spectacular deity of the daily variety — we might still want to think about why we long to breathe that air.
It seems an outdated idea doesn’t it? Even Tripathi must reach back millennia to find what he describes so well as the historical basis for his stories.
But maybe we haven’t worn this out yet. Maybe the cultures of India, many of which live so closely alongside their religious traditions, are exactly the place in which we should expect to see this way of working, this pathway — so much more beautifully lighted than most — toward what we meant to do when we started, for you 10 years ago. For some of us…longer.
I don’t doubt for a minute that you’re working at this level in your own work. It took Tripathi six years or so, he tells us. The real work takes longer, it’s not the stuff of fast genre mills. You’re doing something at a deep level, if you’re putting this kind of time into it.
I say keep doing that. I’m on it, myself, and it’s a pleasant surprise for the most handsome Methodist minister’s son ever to emerge from South Carolina to find that Amish’s experience is so interesting to me. That comes from integrity. Nothing else makes me stop and look again like this when we’re in the vestibule of somebody’s faith. I normally shake hands and dash out, one “first son of the church” to another. Not this time.
He’s on to something. I think you are, too. I think I am, too. And I’m glad of it.
We should take all the time we need. Lord Shiva apparently has waited for 4,000 years to find an Amish Tripathi who’d listen. :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter–
I’m glad things went so well for you in your Twitter badminton match with Amish Tripathi. With or without his blessing, it’s easy to see why you had a better day.
But I have a question.
First, though, you tell us that Tripathi “and his agent” did a self-published print run of 5000 copies of his first book, along with “high-end physical publication of a sample chapter” to be given away in bookstores. Like a rainmaker seeding clouds, the 5000 copies were “leveraged ” to eventually cut a deal with a commercial publisher.
You also say that “Tripathi is the grandson of a Sanskrit scholar, a pandit….” I don’t know exactly what this means, but I bet it counts for plenty in the way of street creds or cache in Indian society, where the caste system is still very much alive and well. You later quote Tripathi on the author’s obligation in terms of marketing: “You shouldn’t leave it to publishers. You must take charge of your own book.”
You conclude by pointing to the importance of loving one’s work for itself, not in terms of hopes for worldly success. Tripathi asserts that “success was a prerequisite to like my banking career,” but as a writer he’d be perfectly happy with worldly failure.
So: we have a banker-turned-writer, with a very useful pedigree, and an agent willing to invest serious money to publish 5000 copies, plus a high-end physical publication of a sample chapter for free distribution in bookstores. But the author is confident he’d be happy with worldly failure.
(Note: I once self-published a book with a print run of 1000 copies. The total cost of production, printing, etc. came to about $10,000.)
At last, Porter, here’s my question: what exactly is the point you’re trying to make? Without doubting the commercial appeal of Tripathi’s books (after all he’s a banker, with a savvy agent who knows the market), I don’t really see how this story differs from so many others whose simple message is that “it takes money to make money.” An ambitious person of privilege, a banker with an agent business partner ends up doing very well.
So? You conclude that “what I think I saw and heard in Amish Tripathi is something we could use more of…: personal commitment, purpose, intent.” Perhaps so. But unless you’re pulling our collective leg (always a possibility), other than being another blockbuster success story tailor-made for People magazine, I don’t really get what the take-away is here.
I looked on eBay to get a copy of your book. Is it called The Dating Service? I usually buy books from eBay.
Hi Tina. Yes, my only commercially published novel is The Dating Service, a thriller put out by Berkley a very long time ago. Currently, I am in the process of self-publishing a series of suspense novels featuring a woman journalist. I also self-published a short novel for dog lovers, called Just Bill. It’s available at Amazon. Thanks for asking.
Hi, Barry,
I think what I’ve failed to describe adequately for you here is another layer of endeavor and interpretation of commercial success, in this case the commercial success (and apparent spiritual satisfaction) of Amish Tripathi.
I’ve just written to Vaughn that it must be easy for those we see as successful to say that their success doesn’t matter. Sure.
But Tripathi did not have to start talking about this experience as he does. He might have left it where you see it — money led to money. (He has said that the arrangement with his agent was that the agent would pay for the 5,000-run of the self-published edition if Tripathi would pay for the marketing — as you say, a business deal and one that worked in this case.)
it’s just fine to leave it there if you prefer to. if this was for you a simple event of market actions creating market results, good. As we know, it didn’t have to work. It might have flopped. I take it that you are less chuffed by your own publication of 1,000 copies. So be it.
I think Amish Tripathi’s talk of another level of experiencing this is more interesting, more informative, more edifying. He has not, to my knowledge, said anything that might counter your list of these events. In fact, he talks a lot about being a banker, of reading no fiction until he started writing, of being the last person some might have thought would turn into a novelist. He may be more surprised than you.
And then he sees another level to this. No problem if you don’t, certainly not for me and I’ll bet not for him, either.
And thanks for reading and commenting, as ever!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi Porter.
Because I do in fact love writing for its own sake, I can’t do what common sense tells me to, which is to let this go.
The fact is, you did succeed in “describing another layer and interpretation of commercial success” for Amish Tripathi. What we aren’t likely to agree on is what this other layer and interpretation means.
If a banker in my country were to “get religion” as seems to have happened with Tripathi, and then went on to realize huge literary success, what would we expect him to attribute his success to? His spiritual awakening, of course. Especially if his writings were based on religious material.
“Tripathi did not have to start talking about his experience as he does. He might have left it where you see it–money led to money.”
No, I really don’t think he could have. Not if he had his own Hindu equivalent of a “come to Jesus” (come to Shiva) experience, and made this publicly known in a deeply religious country. Not if the subject matter of his books had to do with a principal deity in that country’s pantheon of gods and goddesses.
Such a view isn’t cynical. It’s just logical inference, based on what you’ve given your readers to work with.
Humming happy sound. Someone who writes all in and connected. That more than anything else — readers who tell you they screamed, bit their nails, couldn’t put it down, went through a fistful of tissues, before yelling “Yes!” at your ending, now that is my definition of success.
In a blog environment that insists on putting Descartes ahead of the horse, (sorry, kinda — irresistible) aka screaming, ranting, rending of garments about marketing and I run.
Write first. When you come out of the fictive fog, then figure out what to do with it.
And, BTW, may all the Gods (or the Universe if you are an atheist) bless you . . . for sharing.
Thanks, Morgyn,
I feel well and truly blessed.
:)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
It is always worth exploring what your characters believe in, as well, because what a character believes so heavily influences what a character does, says, and thinks.
I ended up with an atheist, an agnostic, and a believer – it makes a nice background to how the story plays out.
Other possibilities are different degrees of faith within the same family, and major differences in religious outlook between neighbors and nations.
A very good take on character basis in belief — and of character awareness of that belief. Good point,s Alicia, tanks,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Loved this:
If somebody told me that, “Your books will be super-flops”…would I still be happy? The honest answer is yes. Success or failure was irrelevant in loving my writing career…I would continue to write even if my books remained only in my laptop. And that is actually a wonderful place to be. Where the journey itself becomes a place of joy. And the destination doesn’t matter.
Way to find your passion, Amish. That in itself is a gift from ‘the gods.’
Dee Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
Thanks for the note, Dee,
I agree with the chuck on the chin for our Mr. Tripathi, and a big nod to Lord Shiva, too. I’m not messing with that dude, myself. :)
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I’m bookmarking this article to come back to it again. Thank you for sharing some of your interview and experience with Amish. The one word that sticks out for me is “intention.” That’s where I’m at, nailing down my intention because it informs everything involved with the pursuit of a writing career- all the way down the line to business and marketing decisions. It’s been the hardest part for me, and I’m forever going back to change and refine it. Amish is brilliant at this and that is encouraging to any lover of words and story.
Thank you, Tonia,
And you couldn’t have chosen a better word than “intention.” So frequently we lose sight of it, and how odd that is!
I’ve just put out a new piece, as a matter of fact, on how easy it is for many great self-publishers to confuse their own intentions of creativity with the means of self-publishing — might hold something of this theme for you: https://tcat.tc/1GNrE9n
Thank you again for your good comment
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi, Porter:
I kinda sorta have to admit that Barry has a point. My takeaway is: It’s a bit glib to be positive about purpose when you’re in the hay. Amish may be entirely sincere, I don’t doubt that he is, but I was raised in the tradition of the Book of Job (and its secular iteration, MOBY DICK), I also worked twenty years in the “justice” system, and I try never to lose sight of the tragic element to this curious existence.
Of course, it you believe in a never-ending cycle of lives (reincarnation), there is nothing tragic about suffering, sorrow, and loss. You’ve earned your fate through karma. It’s a very tidy moral system, and one that can lead to an honorable and mindful life, depending on how honorably and mindfully one sticks to it.
That said, I’m impressed with his spiritual journey. I contributed to a collection of essays titled: FAITH: essays by believers, atheists, and agnostics. The most beautiful thing about the collection is its ability, in essays from diametrically opposed positions, to nonetheless encourage the reader to listen.
I do believe a sense of purpose can get you through much of the aforementioned suffering, sorrow, and loss in life. That doesn’t make that purpose true — just effective.
My own journey has narrowed my scope to a simpler level, something I gleaned from studying the Stoics and Buddhism: Be the best person you can be at every point of the journey. Own the moment. The rest is largely illusion.
It gets me through my writing day. And a great deal else.
Wild, wooly, wonderful post. Thanks, Porter.
Hi, David,
And apologies for this ridiculously late reply. I didn’t want to let your good comment go unanswered, but am in the three busiest months of my year right now (almost nonstop travel for conference coverage), so I’m pretty ragged on the comeback.
I love this line from you:
“My own journey has narrowed my scope to a simpler level.”
My hat’s off to you on this. I find that while I’m particularly good at handling the multiplicity of obligations I carry, that simplification/consolidation thing — which I equate in my mind with a serenity I’d kill for — just isn’t yet in my grasp. Every time I’m really in the moment? Fifteen moments-to-come go off the rails, five articles don’t get written, three conference calls are dropped, four conference sessions don’t get programmed. So ironically it seems to be being outside the moment that gives me the perspective I need, the higher view, to keep things on the rails.
Bizarre, huh? When writing, I’m there as fully as I probably am at any other moment. But even then some part of one frontal lobe or the other is scanning, pinging, testing, cataloging what else has to get done and how close the next disaster is coming to me.
Wild and woolly R us, you see, lol. And it helps to hear someone as productive as you say that something simpler is possible. Most people saying such things, I blow off as sprout-eating meditators, lol. From you, I can believe it.
So thanks for the hope.
And now back to my regularly scheduled whirlwind. :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
This is such a great post. As a self-published writer myself, I see the traps involved, both inner and outer. There’s a whole community online detailing the woes in each camp, whether it’s the traditional one or the self-publishing one. It’s too easy to get caught up in the arguments of each, which can have a negative impact on one’s writing life.
I appreciate Amish’s take on his work, and how he’s approached publishing and marketing. As well, what he has discovered about the greater questions we all have about faith, speaks volumes about the man and the writer.
Right, Diana,
And thanks for your good comment. Although I’ve traveled through 12 time zones since you wrote this, I wanted to get back to your good comment because I finally got this piece out https://tcat.tc/1GNrE9n and wanted to get it to you. It’s about the problem — totally understandable – that I think a lot of self-publishers have of confusing the means (self-publishing) with the goal (getting their books out there).
Remembering that a pathway to publication is just that, a route not a religion, is very hard. And of all things, we find it taking the religious Amish Tripathi to help us remember that self-publishing is really not a faith, not a crusade, as I call it in this piece, but just a means to an end.
Very helpful, huh? Thanks again and sorry for the slow reply.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I had quite a few thoughts as I read this wonderful post this morning. First, how great that Amish Tripathi has turned to God. There is something supremely freeing when you give yourself over to a Higher Being, that realization that there is more to life than just the earthly wonders. And that’s where that joy comes from. So yes, I too, write, even if it will stay on my computer, or as Jim says, he’ll staple his and charge a buck.
I think we are hardwired to enjoy such books. Too bad, Western civilization prefers to throw away God and focus on just the fallen human. Imagine how much richer our stories would be if we too, embraced our Judeo-Christian culture and imbued our stories with it.
God bless you.
Thanks, Vijaya,
And sorry for the slow response here — a huge spate of travel has intervened.
it is unfortunate in some ways, yes, that the West has been less consistent with faith-based perspectives, although I think that the experiment, if we can think of it that way, of generating a largely agnostic and/or atheistic stance for society is important. The downfall of Christianity is its insistence that others think like it does, after all, and even if it means having to set the baseline at no-faith, we are right, as a culture, to be sure we don’t impose religious expectations on others.
The joy you find in religious faith would not be the same if you were forced into it by a social or legal mandate, after all. And the freedom we enjoy to find our own way to religion — or not — is far safer in secular than religious hands.
How ironic, huh?
Thanks again!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
It’s wonderful Tripathi has such a meaningful sense of peace around his call to writing. I began that way, then became part a cog in the publishing machine and lost my way. I’m happy to say I’ve found my way again. My point? Finding peace is a constant struggle. This struggle is the very essence of being alive. If we are always at ease, fulfilled, and content, what would we produce? Where would this world strive to go? Though I relish my moments of creative (and inner peace), I also revel in the turmoil that sparks change and challenges me to greater heights.
Love this, Heather,
And sorry to be so long (12 time zones later!) in getting back to you.
I know what you mean, in that I once was far clearer on my own pathway and position than I feel at times today, not because of a lack of success but because success comes with its own new complexities and claims on one’s sanity…quickly you start being pulled in directions that seem like a logical outcome but in fact are tangential to where you need to be.
Just put this out https://tcat.tc/1GNrE9n about self-publishers needing to get over self-publishing, odd as that sounds, if it becomes the guiding light rather than the means to an end. So easy to have that happen and it’s one of the most seductive parts of community, too: everybody loves to rally around a cause…as if something called “self-publishing” were valid as a cause like cancer research and gifted-children support, lol. “Help promote self-publishing” is actually a pretty crazy idea when you think of it.
Glad you have such a clarified view, hang onto that — you’re far ahead of the madding crowd.
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson