A Creative Break

Weekly Epiphanies

Hello Dear Readers,

This past week, days in Singapore could be divided into two neat parts: bright and sunny until it rains and dark and gloomy thereafter. The best thing about the weather was that it allowed me to go for morning walks without being shouted at by the sun. The sky draws its cloud curtain early in the day, giving the sun its due only by nine a.m.

I prefer brisk morning walks to evening strolls. The morning footpaths are less busy than the evenings, and everyone walks at a fairly decent pace. An evening walker’s speed is dictated by the energy-drained trudging of the end-of-day returnees.

Early in the day, everything looks fresh and dapper. The glistening dewdrops on the leaves, the spic and span children rushing off to school, the office-goers looking prim and proper in formalwear, and the active seniors on the exercise machines in public parks give a sense of well-being— a feeling of all being well with the world. Life moves on in the morning, no matter how dark the night was. The morning hustle offers me solace that although I may not be a part of the productive brigade, there are others who keep the wheel moving and the economy churning.

Evenings are wrought with despondent feelings that I may not have achieved what I set out to do, that my plan for the day was not to scroll but to write, and I have done precisely the opposite of what I envisaged. Coming to the bane of social media, I must soon write on the perils of being an ‘authorpreneur.’ You can expect a post on that soon. I have so many unwritten posts—in my notebooks, in my pending lists, and some even in my head—that it’s getting overwhelming.

Meanwhile, I have no short story for this weekend. As my writer friend Sonia Dogra says, I hope to refill my cup (of woes?) from now until early next year. Besides, I should take a long hard look at the shorts I wrote in the past year. Should I put out another compilation soon?

Not that I will cease to write fiction, but I won’t be publishing them weekly on my SubStack. You will find the newsletter in your inbox, only to say hello and share my reading updates, if nothing else.

I have achieved some sort of a personal reading record by sticking with the Mick Herron series of spy thrillers until I finish all eight of them. I don’t think I have done this since childhood when I would read the Enid Blyton mystery series like the Secret Seven, the Famous Five, Carolyn Keene’s Nancy Drew series, or Franklin W Dixon’s Hardy Boys series. Aah! Nostalgia.

If you like British Spy thrillers, you should check out Slow Horses on Apple TV. The irreverence is charming. It is difficult to say if I liked the books over the televised version or vice versa. Some aspects of the visual media absolutely trump the book, like the action. However, the character development can only happen through the book unless the makers deliberately slow down to include voiceovers with the character’s innermost thoughts. That would make the televised version boring.

When characters capture the readers’ imagination, and they wait to learn more in the writer’s subsequent books, it is truly a creative highpoint.

That’s all from my desk this weekend. Stay happy, and keep reading!

Sudeepa