Creativity | On My Canvas

Favorite Books of 2022

This year I read about forty books only (apart from children’s books, online journals, and print magazines). As I don’t bother to finish the books I don’t like, most of those forty were strong books. I am sharing here the ones that suffused me with courage and child-like wonder, showed me the beauty and the ordinary genius of everyday life, reaffirmed that we are shadows of our childhood, and equipped me with tools to understand life better.

Without these books I wouldn’t have been who I am today, I wouldn’t have known that ecstatic state of being out of this world that they rollerbladed me into, and my journey as a writer would have stagnated. (My all-time life-changing books are in the link.)

As a runnel of rainwater runs to meet the brook, writers run towards this common wellspring of inspiration, which is nothing else but the river of all great writing ever written. Like a thirsty tiger, we kneel, bend our knees, and drink from it every so often. Here, very humbly, I offer you some drops from that wellspring so not only you could make more sense of everything around you, but also see the beauty in all this.

Shall we?

Thank you for coming along on this journey with me and supporting me always. If I have learned one thing in these five years, it is that the joy of creating should be enough. When we work hard and persist, we arrive at the goal, destination, or prize we have our eyes on. The much-planned …

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We are truly alone in the experience of being the human being we are.

“Can anyone truly understand the existence of another person’s internal world?” Correctly asks the author Olivia Laing in her book “the Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone”.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about loneliness. Perhaps because I’ve been lonely, like everyone else, a lot of times. (managing and understanding emotions)

At some lone moment a couple of months ago I picked up Olivia Laing’s book. I thought the title would explore a writer’s journey through the lonely city life — something I’m interested in because not only do I find loneliness in metropolitans but also in the countryside where local cultures can be alienating, unintentionally or intentionally (read my Spiti mountain journey to see how I felt isolated even amongst a local family). But I found that the book is much more than the singular experience of Laing.

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Letters From Van Gogh The celebrated painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) regularly wrote to his brother Theo, his ardent supporter and friend. Out of the hundreds of letters by Vincent van Gogh, the Vincent van Gogh organization has put about hundred on their website. The book Ever Yours: The Essential Letters contains a broad selection of …

What Makes Writing Good and Some Principles of Effective Writing

What is Good Writing?

We write the best when we write to understand our ideas and opinions, not to publish. Much of our beloved writer Woolf’s work (her diaries, Street Haunting, a Room of One’s Own) reads like her efforts towards self-understanding.

Good writing shows the meaning of all this without any judgment and scorn.

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Creative Living Beyond the Constant Humdrum of the Daily Daily Distractions in Creative Living The Muse Why Do We Create and How to Persuade the Muse Perseverance First We Start By Being Unsatisfied Then We Fight the Distractions We Meditate We Focus on The Littlest of Details and Let Results Take Care of Themselves It …

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While some people can’t focus until they have meandered around for hours and finally give in to guilt, others sit and get amazing work done by just holding the pen right: having a daily creative routine could be complicated or could come simple and natural.

What does a creative schedule even mean? A schedule that inspires creativity and helps the creators (writers, painters, entrepreneurs, designers, artists, and other creative professionals) forge their imaginations most desirably.

Also, creativity is subjective. A coder is creative when she can write a 100-line code in 10. A marketeer is creative when he can sell toothpaste such as Pepsodent to the human race.

Anyone with original ideas (in or out of their work sphere) is creative.