'So when are you going to write your novel?'*

If there's one question which has been asked of me ever since I became a book reviewer, this is it. And by everyone I know. Friends, relatives, well-wishers, journalists, parents and absolute random people who I might have met at some of those boring book launches. 


Which brings me to the point about reviewing and book writing: why do most people assume that, if you're a book reviewer, you're also an aspiring writer? 


Perhaps it's got to do with the fact that some book reviewers in India are authors and vice-versa. Or maybe - and this is just a guess - there's this perceived notion that book reviewing enables to you to meet publishers, writers, critics who then help in cutting short the excruciatingly long process of  getting published. 


But ask any published writer of repute and he or she will tell you that book writing is an extremely arduous, ambitious, mind-numbing, finger-breaking, brain-frying process.  From what I've heard over the past one year, it seems getting a hair transplant or undergoing plastic surgery seem less painful (unless of course you do a Michael Jackson and change the way you look every alternate day). And this is just the writing process I'm talking about. Getting published is a different ball-game altogether. 

I won't drone on about the how's and why's of writing and publishing any more except to state both require the patience of a saint, mind space, lots of time and that brilliant, Stephen Hawking-invented component without which no book would ever get published: a story (a calm Shivraj Patil look on your face whenever there's some major issue in the manuscript will count as bonus).

As for me, I don't think I have very many of the elements listed above. And also, I'm very happy with book-reviewing. Most satisfying activity it is. 

*Disclaimer: This blog post is not meant to discourage/dissuade/demoralise/kill the aspirations of any aspiring writer. It is purely an exercise in random self-indulgence and to keep the craft of writing alive in the blogger. Please write/don't write at your own risk.