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Steta Publishers was a writing and brand language consultancy that ran from 2012 to 2016. We are no longer available for projects. Our founders now work here and here. 

Writing (blogs) is a habit

3/5/2015

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There are four people in my family who choose some form of writing as a career – my niece is one of them. A few years back, she told me that the company she worked for insisted that the writers in the team write blog posts regularly. I wondered at that time if there really was any substance to that process. I mean there are just so many types of writers today. There are novelists, journalists, medical writers, technical writers, instructional designers, information architects, content writers, proposal writers, script writers, and even specialist writers to write your CVs! Each writer specialized in his or her own niche area. And all these writers wrote professionally anyway. Why this need to write something extra?

Cut back to the present. I have not posted a blog in a while. (The last was 5 months back. I am still in shock, to put it mildly!) I begin to realize that there is probably some substance in that company insisting that the writers posted blogs regularly. Blogging is perhaps the simplest way to gather our thoughts on a particular subject and then well…write about it. I think one must just write – and not really bother if anyone’s reading; much like that saying about how one should dance as if no one’s watching.

Today, writing is reduced to texting, pinging, tweeting, Whatsapping, and posting updates on Facebook. While all these methods facilitate communication, there is perhaps nothing more satisfying than writing a piece about something that catches our fancy and then capturing it on paper (so what if it is in MS Word or on a blogging site?). It’s there and it’s mine! I have a sense of satisfaction at writing a complete piece. I can’t imagine I’d derive the same sense of satisfaction from a Facebook post, for example. 

I can’t help but remember a line from Francis Bacon’s essay from college where he says Reading Maketh a Full Man; Conference a Ready Man; Writing an Exact Man. He may have been hauled up in today’s gender sensitive world, but I think he did have a point. So, all you writers out there, happy writing!

By Urmilla Chandran
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Working on an Art Book Part III – Writing The Book

8/10/2014

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Previously, we talked about interviewing Himmat and crafting the content strategy. Here, we will share some thoughts on the actual writing process.

After you’ve created a piece of text, you’ve got to spend hours polishing it to perfection. It’s very helpful if someone else – ideally, a professional editor – does a thorough comb through it. Editors look at the overall flow and narrative of the text, and they also proofread.

Longer pieces of text need great attention spans. In this case we found that we had repeated certain ideas more than once across the text. This happens when you’re trying to make connections between the different aspects of a person’s life. But it’s annoying for a reader to get that ‘Didn’t I just read this somewhere?’ feeling. As with any piece of writing, a fresh pair of eyes notices a whole lot of new things.

Most text goes through several drafts before it is good enough to be shown to the world at large. Besides the crucial aspects of grammar, spelling, tense, consistency and so on, there are other more ambiguous issues at work, such as choice of words, active/passive voice, writing style, and sentence length and construction. Here are a few examples of things we mulled over.

High relief: Is it hyphenated or not? Since it was the title of the book, we had better be really sure!

Are walls ‘built’, ‘created’, or ‘constructed’? Since these were unique walls of art, we often used ‘created’.

An artist can conceptualise, imagine, dream, create, build, work, draw, paint and sculpt. Consider which is the most appropriate word for the context.

Each of the three high relief walls had a specific construction process. We had to understand this process in detail, and explain it to a reader. Technical processes have specific words that should not be replaced. For instance, cement is ‘cured’, bricks are ‘laid’, and wood is ‘seasoned’. A wall needs ‘reinforcement’ (not support).

The Acknowledgement section of the book looked deceptively simple to write. In fact, we agonized over it again and again. There is always the very real fear of leaving someone out. Then one has to consider the order in which to thank people. The main challenge is to make sure the acknowledgement is genuinely grateful, and not seemingly routine in any manner.

Though captions are just little sentences under images, they are very important. The caption has to make sense of the image. Vague captions are meaningless and useless. If a caption turns into a paragraph, it probably needs to move into the text itself.

There are countless issues when it comes to writing, but not to worry, we won’t go into all of them here! I can’t leave without saying one last thing. There is a certain thrill to see one’s writing in print. And when it is a book of this nature, the thrill is just so special. 

Armeen Kapadia
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Working on an Art Book Part II – Content Strategy

26/9/2014

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In my last post, I shared my experience of meeting and interviewing the artist, Himmat Shah for the purpose of documenting one of his projects. To create the content for the High Relief book, we needed to understand Himmat’s high relief work, and Himmat the person. Sometimes, it is hard to separate these two aspects. The work of the artist stems directly and indirectly from his beliefs, childhood experiences, and personality.

When Himmat talks, his work and life seem inextricably entwined. It is the work of a writer to separate these two strands, tell two distinct stories, and yet connect them as and when needed. Art that he creates today, is often inspired from something he saw or heard decades back.

How does one decide the tone and voice of a book? In such cases, the text must reflect the spirit and personality of the artist. In this case, it was a deeply philosophical, creative, yet young at heart and thoroughly modern personality. The text has to explain the work and build an image of Himmat in the reader’s mind.

If the writer’s individual style dominates too much, it dilutes a reader’s understanding of the artist. It is the writer’s responsibility to make sure that the book allows Himmat’s voice to come through clearly. Writing involves expressing your own thoughts in words. In this book, we were expressing another person’s thoughts in words. Himmat has a unique and whimsical way of putting things across, and we used some of his statements as quotations to support the text.

How does one want to tell the story of a person’s life? Are we looking at his life through the lens of his work, or the lens of his personal life, or the lens of a philosophy? To answer this question one has to first answer these primary questions:

1)   Why are we creating this book?
2)   Who is going to read this book?

Once you have a clear answer to both these questions, you’ll know how you want to tell the story.

Then again, there is the all-important question of time. Do you want to start in the present day and move to the past? Do you want to tell the story chronologically, as it happened? Do you want to ignore time, and narrate events in the order of their importance?

Finally, are you going to tell this story in the first, or third person? We experimented with both these narratives before we settled on the third person. The first person narrative narrowed the point-of-view, and gave too much importance to Himmat the person, which he did not want. The third person narrative allows for better work descriptions.

All these decisions are influenced by the answers to the two primary questions I mentioned earlier. Before writing, one has to have the structure of the book in place. This includes the chapter, sub-chapters and any other sections. The structure is the skeleton, which lends support to the entire body. Embarking on a book without this is like heading into the Amazon alone without a compass, map or tent. You aren’t likely to come out of there alive. It is essential to have this structure at the back of your mind at all times.

The structure also guides the graphic designer, and keeps the designer and writer on the same page (quite literarily). In this case, the book was visual in nature. A rough sequence of the photographs was decided first, and the text was written later. Sometimes, the text is written first, and photographs are plugged in later. It all depends on the nature of the book.

Once you’ve got some clarity, you simply have to put your fears behind you, the paper in front of you, and start writing!

In my next post, I’ll talk about the process of writing, and the final proofreading and signing off on the content.

Armeen Kapadia
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    Authors

    Steta's founders, Urmilla Chandran and Armeen Kapadia author this blog. 

    We love letting our thoughts (crazy, stupid or smart) out for some fresh air.


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