10 Smart Writing Tips By Twinkle Khanna Which The Bold Author Swears By

Two adjectives that perfectly describe Twinkle Khanna are bold and beautiful. The former actress and current Twitter sensation, Twinkle has always been unafraid to speak her mind with the most recent evidence coming from her appearance on Koffee with Karan.

Even beyond 140 Twitter characters, she shines as a writer. Just recently, she launched her new book, ‘The Legend of Laxmi Prasad’ and has been receiving praise for it both on and off the internet.

Twinkle Khanna in an interview with Supriya Nair for Vogue India December 2016 issue revealed some ‘serious and strange rules of writing’ that she swears by:

1. Read everything you can get your hands on.

Read all the time and everywhere, even in the bathroom, skim through the lines on the back of shampoo bottles and sanitary napkin packets. Fill your brain with so many words that the urge to throw up on paper is inescapable.

 

2. Eat carbohydrates.

All these protein diets may help you twirl prettily in a size 2 dress but if you want your mind to take a few marvelous leaps then you have to give it the food it needs.

 

3. Edit.

 

4. Live in the world of probabilities.

Examine things with a magnifying glass made up only of what-ifs.

 

5. Find a tolerant family.

 

6. Observe things and daydream.

Spot a lone turtle swimming in a green pond? Well, that may just be enough to give you a few ideas. A turtle looking for a mate, unknowing that in this man-made pond he will not find anything but sterility. Or perhaps you’ll see a singular image and there you have it, the last bit of a story that you are yet to write, of a woman in a polka-dotted swimsuit, entering that pond. She looks at the turtle vanishing under the mottled lotus leaves and wonders what it would be like to dive beneath, glide to the bottom, disappear.

 

7. Find your voice.

Apparently, literary agents look for something they call a voice—distinctive, remarkable, defining. The best writers have one, and you can hear it when you read their work.

 

8. Write everyday.

Jot down 1,000 words a day and when you finish, throw away the 800 useless ones that are merely standing in the crowd, twiddling their thumbs, swarming around the 200 that matter.

 

9. Walk, run, cycle.

When you live inside your head, you have to open windows, air it out, let sunlight stream into all the dark corners of your mind.

 

10. Relish being an oddball.

You know what? That explains a lot. It takes a dash of whimsical with a whole lot of brilliance to produce honest pieces of work as scintillating as those written by our beloved Mrs Funnybones.

Issue Credits: Vogue India December 2016 Issue