I have been receiving a lot of lovely emails recently. It makes a change from the generic: “Dear Candidate, your application has not been successful” emails that tend to sit in my inbox and I actually look forward to checking my emails.
Many people have been asking me what inspires me to blog – after all Avid Scribbler is now 2 years old and has come a very long way from what it started out as. I never really sat down and thought about it until I began receiving these really nice emails. I’ve decided to do a mini series on what inspires and makes Avid Scribbler tick, because the mind of a writer is an intriguing network of contradictions, ideas, feelings and thoughts.
The first post in this series tackles the very heart of who I am as a person: literature. I make no secret of my unconditional love for books – whether it’s writing them or devouring them, I love literature so much that I did a degree in it. I sorely miss those hours I spent curled up in my room, reading and studying books I enjoyed. If you’re still at university or full time education, please make the most of it as you will never get that time back again.
The themes that I blog about, think about and talk about are largely influenced by the types of literature that I read. The very idea of literature is so broad that I feel the need to explain it because it’s not restricted to novels. Newspapers, magazines, blogs, e-books, Facebook posts, scientific journals, billboards etc – these all count as different types of literature which we encounter so much so on a daily basis that we take it for granted.
Creativity is the ultimate expression of life and what it means to be alive
It is a privilege to be able to read, write and express yourself coherently in your language – whether it’s a national one or your mother tongue. The power of literature and writing is far more poignant because it has the ability to touch our minds and hearts in ways that no other form of communication can. It is so empowering because when you read a book, you become an invisible character who watches and experiences the plot unfold as each page turns.
In no particular order, I have picked 10 – it was extremely difficult – books which inspired me to read, write, blog and paint.
1. White Teeth – Zadie Smith
2. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
3. Oranges aren’t the only fruit – Jeanette Winterson
4. The Human Stain – Philip Roth
5. Brick Lane – Monica Ali
6. Small Island – Andrea Levy
7. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
8. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
9. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Marquez
10. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Avid Scribbler 
I think it’s more imperative in this day and age that people learn to read from a more broader spectrum of literature. I feed it into my kids that they should read various different publications, so that you can learn to distinguish the different tone from each piece about a particular article.
As I might have said somewhere that writing is the medicine of life, it’s certainly a better alternative to when it comes to drown your sorrows…or express great joy, which is a shift away from the Indian culture of drinking.
I started blogging/writing for one objective, something to read back to myself in case my memory fails me….
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