How to Be a Writer by Ruskin Bond - Book Review

When I first saw the book, “How to Be a Writer” by Ruskin Bond, I bought the book online. I was curious to know what a person with seventy years of writing experience was going to say. 

Ruskin starts the book by describing the common complaint against all writers – writers repeat themselves. He tells that while painters, artists, and musicians are allowed to repeat their work, a writer is often criticized. One of the examples he gives is of Turner who painted so many sunsets. He concludes by saying, it is inevitable that a writer will occasionally repeat himself.

To be a good writer, Ruskin suggests that you must have a love of books, love of language, a love of life, an observant eye, a good memory, enthusiasm, optimism, and persistence. Ruskin encourages us to read a lot. He was influenced as a boy by Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. 

Ruskin asks you to choose a place or city that you know well enough for your story. Then you are familiar with the sights, sounds, people, creatures’ tame or wild, forest or factories, high roads or little-town pathways of the place. So, you can bring out the beauty of the place in your writing. He gives examples of Dickens who always wrote about London and R.K. Narayan about Malgudi.

You need to create characters that are immortal. For Conan Doyle, it was Sherlock Holmes. For Agatha Christie, it was Hercule Poirot. Sherlock Holmes also lived permanently in Baker Street in the stories. And your popular characters should not age or grow old. That person is the strongest who stands alone. Create such a hero or heroine, and you might create another Huck Finn or Harry Potter.

Ruskin Bond asks us to choose a suitable title for the story. You will be surprised to know the initial titles for some of the popular books. The Mill on the floss was Sister Maggie; Jaws was The Summer of the Shark; Gone with the wind was Ba! Ba! Black Sheep.

He writes – As a writer, I have known hope and despair, success and failure, some recognition, but also long periods of neglect and critical dismissal.

Ruskin says one writes best when one is alone. You need not go to a mountain top to achieve that. If you have a quiet place for yourself inside a house, it would be great to write alone. A notebook is very essential. Whenever you get an idea or observe something, you can immediately note it down. Ruskin sometimes gets up in the middle of the night to note down an idea.

To be a good writer or a successful writer, you must be original. Put words together so they make meaningful or beautiful sentences. Cultivate your style. If you have a writer’s block, put your work aside for some time. Write a travelogue or poetry and then come back to your masterpiece.

Every writer must be prepared for some criticism. The greatest of writers haven’t escaped it. If it’s constructive criticism, pay attention to it. If it’s just plain nasty, laugh it off.

On publishing, he says you may have to wait for weeks, months, sometimes more than a year to find a publisher for your book. Publishers are extremely wary of first-time authors. There may be rejections, but if you are a good writer, your work will finally get published. Never despair. Never stop writing. And never give up.

There is a chapter that describes in detail the popular themes for writing such as Humour, Political Satire, Horror, Ghost stories, homes, families, and the individual, and school stories.

The book ends with a list of book recommendations by Ruskin Bond. There is a very beautiful postcard at the end that is addressed to Mr. Bond.

When you open the book and browse, you will be happy to see the big font and catchy illustrations. The illustrations are by Shamika Chaves and Chaaya Prabhat.

Apart from the nuggets of writing wisdom, it’s the observation and examples about the writings of other authors and his writing that are quite interesting.

The book is published by Harper Collins and there are 124 pages. It takes about 2 hours to read the book. The book is priced at Rs.299.