Should you take writing advice from other writers?

Reading lots of writing advice can be counter-productive

Writing advice is abundant these days, especially on the Internet.

There was literally no writing advice when I was growing up. There was no Internet. In India there are no magazines or books on writing.

All my writing came from the books that I read.

In Hindi, most of the books were of pulp fiction variety — those pocketbook types that you get on railway stations and bus terminals. Most were detective books interspersed with subtle sexual innuendoes. They were entertaining and I spent many years devouring those books.

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In English books, although I started with elementary books (English is not my mother tongue or national tongue) such as Enid Blyton and Hardy boys. Oh yes, Biggles.

If you’re wondering how come I was reading these books in India, especially during my childhood, I studied in a special school (all children had cerebral palsy) and all the books in our library were donated by the British embassy staff.

The jump from here to Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy was sudden and my mother hand a big hand in this.

We didn’t have a reading environment at home but somehow my mother knew that it…