A great question Raghava. In my publishing life I came across commercially successful authors, most of whom had their own particular way of writing. John Irving, for example, said he couldn't write a word unless he'd sketched out the novel in outline, so for example, he'd know at the outset what the last page would say. Others just start and see where their nose leads them. Another, Colm McCann, writes a page and stops when he knows what comes next, so there's never "writers block". Next day he writes another page, edits/re-writes the first page. The third day, he writes a new page, edits/re-writes the second page etc. This is a process where he's writing and re-writing as he goes along. Richard Miller, who lived in Monterey CA and was known and liked by the people in the City Lights Bookshop in San Francisco said he writes a thousand words every day, just as it comes to him. If he does this five days a week, since a novel tends to be between 80,000 and 120,000 words, between 16 and 24 weeks, he's finished it. He then spends the same amount of time or more, as necessary, editing, re-writing, polishing it, until he's finished. Michael Ondaatje writes in fountain pen. He keeps detailed notes on index cards. He took seven years to write The English Patient, a co-winner of the Booker Prize and which sold over 250,000 in hardcover. He had thirteen versions of the novel, all handwritten, with many of the characters having differing roles in different versions, all detailed in his complex index card system. One of the most successful commercial authors I had the pleasure of meeting was James Michener, who had been a close advisor to President J.F. Kennedy. His novels sold countless millions, many were made into successful Hollywood movies and he told me that the reason his books sold year in year out, was that he never finished a novel until he couldn't make it any better. When people ask me if I'd read a book they've written, the first thing I ask is, "Is it as good as you can make it?" So far, no one has said, "Yes!".

I think this is really important, no one would go into their garden, start whacking at a rock with a hammer and chisel and after an hour or so, say "What do you think of my Shri Ganesha statue?" Yet, this is what they'll do with a piece of their writing.

Writing is a craft, and as such, it has to be learned, and it's learned by the process of writing and introspection, reading your own work with objectivity, as though someone else had written it. And then treating it as a sculptor, or painter might, working it, re-working it until it's not capable of further improvement. For many writers I met, the latter is the fun part.

I was lucky enough to meet, in England and in the USA, the two greatest editors of their day. (One, Robert Gottlieb, who'd been the CEO of Knopf, America's greatest literary publishing house, and the editor of the New Yorker magazine for ten years, told me how to make an English publishing company successful in America.) I asked each on different occasions, what it was they looked for when reading a manuscript by an unknown author. Each said, they're looking for "an authorial voice".

You can only get that voice by writing, I don't believe it can be taught, it has to emerge through years of writing and re-writing.

My advice would be - just write every day, write about anything you find inspiring or interesting. Don't beat yourself up by overthinking and develop the discipline to edit yourself. Above all, write only to please yourself, don't write for markets or nonsense like that, they're only artificial constructs of someone's mind.

I have to leave for the NJ ashram for the third night of Navaratri so allow me to break my own rules by not editing this before I post it!