Bookish Digressions: What's this about?
Bookish Digressions #1: Casual updates on life, reading, and writing.
This is the first installment of Bookish Digressions—a monthly missive from me to you, so the format of this digression is still in flux and I’m sure it will evolve over time. I want these to be more casual and somewhat personal: somewhere between a journal entry and a letter to a friend, but we’ll see how this goes.
A brief life update
At the end of October, I traveled from the US to India to spend time with my family. It has been a nice break, which included a few weeks of remote work and some visa-related admin work, and contrary to what I had originally planned I barely read and wrote anything.
Taking a break from work, I have been thinking about my goal with this blog, trying to bring some structure to it instead of writing and publishing things on a whim. So here are my goals (for now, at least):
To become a better writer by writing a lot and pushing myself with each post.
To expose myself to more ideas and stories, make more interesting connections between them, and improve my thinking.
To read a lot more. (This connects to the second point.)
To meet like-minded people who also love telling and/or reading stories, and who are interested in things that I am interested in. (see: A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox)
To soothe my soul, since writing for an audience, however small, is a balm on my impatient dreams.
So this is the “why“ of it, at least for the upcoming year. I might revisit this at the end of 2025.
Btw, I’m also on Bluesky now (just giving it a try) so if you’re on there, come say hi!
On fiction and accountability
I have been working (sporadically) on a literary fiction/magic realism novel since 2023 (although I had the initial idea in 2021). It is still a very long way from being done. The first draft is still not done as I’m trying to find the story in a pantser fashion. I have codenamed this novel “Project Morpheus.” I do know the real title but don’t want to reveal anything yet. The project, I fear, is very fragile right now.
One major block I have been facing, every time I gain some momentum, is imposter syndrome (who doesn’t?). Now it is quite common to face Resistance on important projects nobody is waiting for you to deliver, especially creative projects, but the problem is that it completely derails all momentum for me. The self-doubt becomes paralyzing and the pages remain empty for months.
So, I want to use this space—these bookish digressions—to also send out updates on the progress I have been (or have not been) making on the novel and some other shorter fiction/writing projects. I hope you don’t mind me making you an accountability partner involuntarily. More on Project Morpheus in the next one.
On reading
I did finish reading one book: Although of course you end up becoming yourself by David Lipsky. I found this book after watching the movie (which is based on the book) End of the Tour. The book, and the movie, are basically an interview that David Lipsky took of David Foster Wallace during the last few days of the final leg of Wallace’s book tour for his novel Infinite Jest in the mid-90s. It is a great book, primarily because you get to go deeper into Wallace’s thoughts on consumerism, literature, depression, and his literary journey. For those who know how Wallace’s real-life story ends, the book feels poignant, like listening to a friend talk one last time. I highly recommend this book (and the movie).
Another reason why I started these bookish digressions is so I can read more. Accountability helps!
I also read a couple of really interesting articles (essays? posts? blogs?) on Substack recently. You might like these (you might notice a theme here):
If you read something interesting, feel free to send it my way. See here for how to contact me :)
Subtle Digressions “Wrapped”
Since this is the end of the year, I also thought it might be interesting to look back at this year in terms of my writing and this blog. If you’re interested in reading a bit more about my writing journey so far and my struggles with it, I wrote about it a few months ago.
I started this Substack blog on May 30, 2024, without any pre-existing audience (I had like ~10 emails from my blog on Ghost, mostly people I already knew). Honestly, it has been such a pleasant experience writing on this platform. In total, I have posted 10 essays (actually it’s 13 but I’m not counting 3 older posts that are just quotes from other writers). That’s more writing than I have done in any prior years. Some of my favorite essays that I wrote are:
Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer's suicide
On Running, Writing, and Life: Some Advice from Haruki Murakami
I also posted a short story I wrote, although I want to start submitting more short fiction to some journals and magazines. I might make this private in the future if I end up submitting it somewhere but for now, if you’re interested, you can read it here:
Going forward, in 2025, I want to become better in two ways:
Consistency: I want to write and publish on a consistent basis. That’s why I updated my About page to reflect that: one post every two weeks. I want to get disciplined in my writing instead of writing on a whim.
Ambition: I want to challenge myself in my writing (and my reading) and write more ambitious essays. I have many essay ideas lined up that will require me to push myself, both in terms of research and writing.
These two goals for 2025 will also help me (I hope) further find my writing voice and the direction of this blog.
On other projects
I also want to create and post more video essays on my YouTube channel. I think most people on Substack don’t want videos in their inboxes so if/when I make any, I’ll share the link to it instead of sending video posts. I want to turn this essay into a video essay but have been struggling with finding the right visual language for it. I enjoy this form but making videos takes an inordinate amount of time so we’ll see how this pans out. I worry I might be stretching myself too thin with this one since I also work an actual 9-5 job and time outside of it is limited.
To infinity and beyond
I’m still thinking about what more I want to do with this blog over the next year. The format of these bookish digressions will also change over the next few months or maybe these will remain mostly formatless. I’m open to suggestions in terms of what else you would like to see here or what else you are interested in reading here.
Until next time!