‘There is Someone Out There’

One of the key advantages of digital storytelling is the unabashed manner in which people can react immediately to updated material. Television reporter and aspiring romance novelist Nidhi Taparia, 26, says blogs invite honest and varied comments and involve others in the creative process: “When people identify with my thoughts, it reassures me about the direction of my writing and validates my feelings.” Computer Games Level Designer Samrat Sharma, 25 agrees, saying, “The blogging community has exposed me to a lot of other writing styles, all of which add to my creative influences.”

The prospective reader whom publishing houses insist writers never for a moment forget is thus an intrusive reality. At the same time a writer cannot seek validation to the point of losing his identity. “You get all kinds of comments,” says blog poet Sachin Khurana, 30. “And some are anything but helpful. You must learn to filter reader opinions so that you don’t lose sense of who you are or where you’re going.”

Like novelists, bloggers too face their own particular constraints. Chapters must be self-contained to capture the interest of new readers, and yet maintain continuity to differentiate them from the lowly online journal. Providing links or summaries to previous chapters is thus imperative. Dedicated online travels not only encouraged Nikhil Pahwa to launch the literary site http://www.motif.tk, it also taught him the secrets of writing a great story. “Attention spans are much lower online,” he says. “Hence the rule of ‘one idea per paragraph’ does not apply. Also, languid and descriptive pieces don’t get much readership. People don’t have that kind of time or patience. You have to constantly make things happen, or constantly make it seem as if they will.”

Ashok Hariharan, 28, gets visitors to return by offering a mix of creative and news writing laced with humour, sarcasm and wit. “Nonsense begets nonsense,” says the Kenya-based IT techie. But even when he’s on a roll, the comments he receives are out of sync. “An American woman wrote asking whether I would help her look for a Maasai man to marry!” he recalls.

But this “free for all” nature of blogs is also a double-edged sword. As the community of writers flourishes, a growing legion of pariah plagiarists finds succour in their work. Says Sharma, “The instant accessibility allows people to copy and paste it onto other places (worse, their own blogs) without so much as a cursory comment.”

But despite the growing, intensely absorbing world of lit-blogs, book publishers are not close to shutting shop. For the mercurial talents of this variable format, which is aspirational, instant and atomised, is simultaneously its greatest disadvantage. Lists Pahwa, “There is a tendency to not post second drafts, since nobody reviews the same plot again; the lack of spell and grammar check is a downside, and you have to dig through a lot of mud before striking gold.” Thus, while PhD student Prashant Dave says, “I used to think writing was a chore and was in no way actively seeking ways to be creative until I began to blog,” he also admits, “blogging can only do so much.”

Nevertheless for aspiring writers who have a voice and need to be heard, the literary blog is the grand podium from which to do so. As they sit alone in a room, writing for people they will never meet, gradually losing sense of time and space in the beguiling promises of the blogosphere, the phrase “there is someone out there” feels suddenly, all too wonderfully true.