I am every day new to Iowa. A way to feel unconvinced even after being here for the last 30 exact days. There are no inconveniences and as far as struggling to attain to this new place, there is very much less to attain from about to sorting your routine to the kind of food you want to eat. Recently I went to the Mustard Seed Farm in Ames and harvested for 7 hours straight in the sun- a day spent learning about plants, plantations, doing some dirty true to your mothers- ancestors digging, repeating, sowing- I loved the expanse and the varieties of tomatoes, operators, leeks, radishes, cucumbers, herbs were present. The simple yet profound rule of ' You can take what you reap or harvest’ stayed with me- I thought about it for the week to come. I guessed everyone would have participated in communal harvesting but it was not so. The veggies and herbs alongside the bouquet of flowers that every harvester got for their manual labor on the farms were a fantastic reminder of work-culture spaces that inspire community ethos- loud and clear through the living example of how a day can indeed be called a creative force of nature and working hands.

Iowa State University- MFA CREATIVE WRITING (Fully Funded) - Fellow & Graduate Teaching Assistant

Recipient of Miller Scholarship

^ That is my identity and achievement

A while back I was still debating whether I should mail the people I have worked with or know once I reach the States.

The idea of doing that one last bookish giveaway was stalled and then it never happened.

The Iowa nice caught up with me as I wrote about the practice for my newsletter, and shared the day with my writing that got an impetus after the short but long day in the sun. What I learned, absorbed, and took away from my second day in the USA was more than the beautiful pontification of Iowa and its landscapes- the farming and the way it drove me to read, and write were impertinent to me as a writer.

I stopped taking money from my parents, said a friend to me one day in law school. I smiled and poured over my heart to her- “I never took money from them”. It was more to do with them not giving me or not having to give me, well, initially it was them not having much to give from. Then when they did get it, I was able-bodied and had a full mind enough to give from rather than ask.

After I started earning through writing, not earning through it but for it is how this journey begins.

“Whatever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it they will want to come back and see you do it again, and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do.” – Walt Disney

If you disrupt or damage that experience, you’re at a cost. If you add more than you subtract, that’s art. Tbh you could be enlightened in an instant if you want, but you don’t want it. You want the struggle and the suffering and the journey and the story before you accept what you already know when you know you are able-bodied to SHOW

Some LINKS TO MUNCH ON

1. Randy Pausch Last Lecture (I was so inspired that I gave the book as a gift to many)

2. Ek Ladki Hai, Jo Mujhe Mujhse Zada Jaanti Hai

3. EPIC Dexter Parody

4. Secret - Official Video by The Pierces

5. MOST EXERCISE EVER - Prem Aggan Review

6. Mugwanti (Love-hate)

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   As for wanting to not go into debt for my MFA and thus seeking what you have to offer and not the 7 schools where I got in the last cycle is because I believe a family cannot have two generations taking loans to buy or in this case- write books. If my father brought books and not a house first, the least I can do is not ask him for money now when I can buy books myself and build a house,myself because god knows I have the strength in me to do both. Mother has been doing nothing but praying and it is through her closed mouth that my echo wishes to travel on the other side of the world.

If I have loved something deeply, I have started to disassociate myself from that desire to build up or feed on that depth that would paralyze me in the long run. Like I love caffeine and I love to rebel but I can go without coffee and without fighting external factors to please the aesthete inside.

Each person is uniquely qualified at something. They have some specific knowledge, capability, and desire nobody else in the world does, purely from the combinatorics of human DNA and development.

To make an original contribution, you have to be irrationally obsessed with something.

Moonlighter

Practical Concerns

From a distance, I watch

a man digging a hole with a machine.

I go closer.

The hole is deep and narrow.

At the bottom is a bird.

I ask the ditchdigger if I may climb down

and ask the bird a question.

He says, why sure.

It's nice and cool in the ditch.

The bird and I talk about singing.

Very little about technique.

—William J. Harris

Some of your best writing will come out of studies and interests that, on the surface, have nothing to do with writing at all. I just spent three years of my life researching and writing a book about the transcontinental railroad because of a commission. I thought this would be a waste of time: it turned out to be one of the most creatively enriching projects I’ve attempted, largely because I love research, but also because of the formal problems the commission inspired. This piece of advice is still about cultivating your curiosity, obviously, but it’s the practical way to ensure you’re doing it. So say yes to things that seem, on the surface, insane. Learn another language. Pick up a musical instrument. Try rock climbing. To believe in yourself as a writer, you have to believe you possess the skills and capabilities of an interesting human. Even if it never ends up on the page, you have made yourself an interesting human, someone other people would ideally like to host at dinner parties.

Hemingway said both he and Pound agreed that the best way to be a writer is to live poorly and simply and work as little as possible on anything that isn’t writing itself.  - This sentence gave me the creeps. It makes me believe in an unforeseeable future.

Writing is not, at heart, a profession, it is a practice: it is the practice of being human. I believe a life well lived is one spent attending to the things you most believe in and love, and words, literature, art, creativity, and the life of the mind, these are all human things I deeply believe in and love.

I started writing this blog when I was applying for MFAs. I thought to myself what I can bring to the program? Well, this. This Newsletter will become haunting for future South Asian candidates. Not only Indians, even though my application process, my familiarity, and the people who guided me most are Indians, but I have also learned to vocalize in the most vernacular and global manner possible because I consider myself a world citizen and I always felt-

That if I knew this before, oh wow.

But, also, I am trying to be the Indian Cady Vishniac and I am glad.

There is so much dearth of material and guidance as far as Applications go and I believe that my 18 hours of research of a year will definitely provide any future aspirant to rock the boat without making holes.

You may ask how did this happen? What took you so long or much less time? It depends on where you read my story from. And your perspectives.

I will definitely write about each section, thought process, people who helped me, guides, etc and I must tell you- it will take me all my life, blogging and making drafts for me to elaborate and give an afterthought on my year-long process. Essentially, the first myth that I might be too good to do an MFA got burst when I was reading this interview with the Director of BU MFA CW and I saw the word I fell in love with instantly, which till now, I had never heard or known. I fell in love, like that. It wasn’t the dates. Definitely not the sex.

I formed a friendship that I was looking out for, holding my hand out. The director of Queens MFA and I exchanged emails, he shared his joys about my work, I told him my apprehensions, even though I eventually never chose his program, I got many opportunities through him and I was elated for finding support through my Apps.

I received UTRGV’s Acceptance on July 29th, 2021. That is 3 months after the fact when people have already started classes but I got to know that I had applied to UTRGV only because I was offered a waiver and I loved the idea of Rio Grande Valley’s comfort- and that is how I applied to more than a dozen places, hoping one would pick me where I fit. 12 did. Choosing to go to Iowa- that was not even a question! Ask any contemporary writer and most would tell you what has come out of Iowa- straight jacket literary giants!

Last year when I got accepted into 7 writing schools, waitlisted at 1, but not getting what I wanted, where I really wanted to be, risking lacs of rupees, all that I could risk, along with my disobedience to marry a Rajput provider from Bihar to reading about women who were leading the kind of rebellion I wanted to be part of in numerous countries, I thought that all this would not have been possible without my father. If not for him, risking everything, two kids, one selfless wife, 5 people he had gotten home, struggling to find an honest day’s job, to borrow money to buy me and my brother books, when he could have easily gotten a car on loan, a house which was not on rent, I would not have read all the books I did, wrote all the stories and poems I could nor would I have left my Law practice to think of myself as a storyteller, a writer, because, no matter how much I might go back in time, by not being successful in places my father desired me, I realized I was always going to be an enigma, now readying to share myself with you. If not for my father, who only left his job as an Engineer to teach underprivileged kids while teaching kids of IAS officers, like whom he wanted me to become, who tagged me along with him in visiting each of these luminaries, thinking I might learn somethings which he could never, I would not be typing this Statement like my life depended on this. Because, my life definitely depends on whether you see me as a struggle who wishes to be heard or a small town teacher’s daughter, waiting to teach the world. My statement is to make you believe that I can do both. Be heard and teach. Are you then, willing to make me learn how to write? so that I can be heard better, and teach better?

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I’d harbored hopes of studying English, but that felt like a frivolous choice when set beside my parents’ labor, so instead, I nurtured my newfound passion privately, reading novels over breakfast, on the Tube, and walking to class. 

I believe financial independence as an artist, and a writer is very much necessary for me. All my life the fear of not being able to eat a decent meal has kept me from achieving what I wanted to at an early age.

Till two years back I did not even know what an MFA was. I just knew that I don’t have money to study or my parents to support me to study Literature. I knew I write well but I did not know if I wrote really well, as much to get into the top schools and so I applied to a bunch of MFAs, most of which provided me with waivers, and voila! Like Joshua Bell playing at the subway-

To be happy (is to) be unashamed. Pursuing the important things requires some willingness to go all out and commit to your identified goals. Be happy, be unashamed.

White people of a certain age love to tell you they are unfollowing you because they view every interaction through the lens of customer service.

– @vinn_ayy

The quality

of appearing to be true to life, of capturing a person or occasion with

such accuracy that the reader recognizes it as true, is called verisimilitude

if you want to be happy you either have to be secretive or nimble

because happiness is something that some people feel must be regulated

I choose nimble, because when I was a miserable kid I wished with all my heart to see someone like myself who was happy

More in the next 5 newsletters that will focus on the resources and my journey to Iowa!

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Wrote this Newsletter listening to Dhillon’s Mashup

This is a free newsletter but not cheap. If you love it, consider supporting it by liking and sharing this newsletter. This letter is reader-supported, hence the lack of ads and sponsors. I don’t get much feedback on my newsletters (I have approximately 2000 and counting readers) If you do read, please feel free to drop me a note or hit the “heart” on the newsletter-

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