Amateur vs professional...

I saw a teaser of a movie called 'Hello' based on Chetan Bhagat's 'One Night at the call centre'. I have read all three of Bhagat's books and found them descending in order of quality of content. Now, Bhagat fans (maybe Mr. Mufaazaa) will want to disagree with me, since now we are conversant with his style, while his first book may have read as a fresh style.

I have started writing recently (I am NOT even starting to compare myself to an accomplished writer /pro) and I have found an important difference in writing styles.

While, writers today resort to callisthenics in order to make their book more saleable, i, as an amateur can write what i want, the way i want and still be free of wanting to sell my words to the readers.

To elaborate my above statement, Mr. Bhagat probably wrote the first piece from his heart, since he was not much bent on selling it, as he was on writing for the fun of it. As he has written successive books, his style is more leaning towards Bollywood scripts, with heroes & villians, struggles of life (as if we dont know how to read characters), and a host of other happenings in normal life which he wants to include or identify with.

In order to cater to a wider audience, I believe he has lost the original audience, who read his book for its maverick style of " I WILL WRITE WHAT I WANT, READ IT OR CHUCK IT... THE HELL I CARE!!"

His latest book is more like Iqbal married to Parzania married to Discovery channel documentary on Gujarat Earthquake (including spicy interviews of victims)...

I read through it only because I was desperate to start reading novels again. Ditto, with the earlier work on call centres. I still think everything is spicy & fine (although not as good as his first work) till he puts God in perspective. All hell breaks loose in later pages as the call centre turns into a terror cell for Americans. I can scarcely believe all this is written by the same author who penned the first book.

So Mr. now-writing-for-Bollywood writes for the intention of selling.I couldn't help do some book bashing to prove my point which follows:

I think Mr. B is justified in his style, if we are to put ourselves in his persepective, where he is under pressure (now) to sell his work to a larger audience and also earn from it. Where amateurs gain, is that they write for the fun of writing (me now & him in his first book). We write from our heart, as we want to convey something, rather than sell it or gain something by writing it.

So, in retrospect, maybe amateur writers are better off at some level, in writing from the heart. While i will be largely proved wrong by a plethora of professional writers if my statement is taken as a generic stand on professional vs amateurs, my point holds true for first time published writers who want to continue it as their occupation. We cant lose track of our style, just because we need to cater to different people. We should in fact be proud (and maybe even arrogant) about our style, while finding alternative strategies (advertising or fancy packaging). But, i still believe those who read the first book with fervour and found it intersting should always be our target audience. 

Happy writing...