Write regularly, be disciplined: Ruskin Bond advice to budding authors

Those who want to make a living out of writing need to write regularly and be mindful of time limits. This is popular author Ruskin Bond's advice to budding authors.

The message from the master storyteller came during an interaction with young students during the launch of his latest masterpiece "Words From My Window - A Journal".

"Before you start writing a book, first write it in your head. Visualise the plot and the characters, before you put it into words," Bond told students of The Shririam Millennium School here on Wednesday as he took their queries about writing one by one.

"If you lose interest in something that you're writing put it aside and do something else, write something else. Then come back to it later with a fresh mind," the 85-year-old Padma Bhushan winning author said.

Bond, who had himself started writing at the age of 17, said writers are full of confidence when they are young and their first few books may become hit but the need is to sustain that success to establish themselves as author.

"You need to consistently produce work of a certain quality. If you want to make a living out of writing, you need to write regularly and be mindful of time limits. It is important to be disciplined," he said.

"Coping with success and carrying it forward as well as dealing with failure and other hard parts is one of the major learning about being an author," the Uttarakhand-based Bond said.

Uttara Singh, the director-principal of the school, said that as educators they strongly believe that reading and being exposed to varied genres is imperative to be creative and innovative.

"It helps develop new perspectives as well as an ability to think beyond the confines of traditional norms," she added.

The event was organised in collaboration with Penguin Random House India and Kool Skool.