Rahul Rao: the (academic) writer
Rahul Rao is a Reader in International Political Thought in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. His research interests are in international relations, postcolonial and queer theory, and the politics of South Asia. Much of his research concerns the global politics of identity – gender, sexuality and, more recently, race and caste. He is the author of two books, Third World Protest: Between Home and the World (2010) and Out of Time: The Queer Politics of Postcoloniality (2020), both published by Oxford University Press. He is currently writing a book on the politics of statues as terrains for the assertion and contestation of racial and caste supremacy.
Do you see yourself as a writer?
It has taken me a while to say ‘yes’ or, at least, I would like to. Sometimes it frustrates me that I have to do quite a lot of other things in order to write. I hardly make a living from writing alone, so I still wonder if I can call myself one. It’s certainly one of the intellectual activities that gives me greatest pleasure.
Do you have a writing routine that works for you? Is there a particular time of the day or place you write best?
I don’t have a writing routine. In the midst of a project when the writing is flowing, I can become so consumed by it that other things fall by the wayside. A general indication of how things are going is that the neater my workspace, the less productive I am being. I used to be very place- and ritual-bound: only ever able to write at my desk with a cup of coffee. But in the last few years, I have moved around quite a lot, which seems to have given me the ability to write from many different kinds of locations including in a house that I was painting with a very furry cat walking around in close proximity to wet walls.
What’s the hardest part of writing for you?
Receiving feedback that indicates that something about the writing has failed to convey what I wanted it to. There’s a process of trying to work out what part of this is you and what part is the reader, whom you respect but might also want to disagree with. Some writing advice says that you should really ‘know your reader’, but I’m not sure I agree. I don’t tend to think about who my readers will be and am often pleasantly surprised when they turn out to be people with interests and projects I hadn’t anticipated. I mostly write for a reader like myself, which probably sounds very solipsistic but is also the reader I know best. That invariably means not reaching some or a lot of other people, but I think I can live with that.
What do you do when you get stuck?
Read! Go for a run. Anything except try harder. I sometimes ask myself, ‘what do I really want to say?’ which sounds very banal as a prompt, but somehow cuts through the forest of citations and other people’s voices to get to the core of what has been troubling or motivating me to put words on a page.
How do you feel about the blank page when you're starting a new project?
Mostly excited. It’s very rarely a blank page because I have already been inscribing it in my mind before I even start. I used to be a meticulous planner, working out the structure of a whole piece before I even began. Over time, I have become less concerned about knowing the shape of the whole in advance and have found that it is enough to have a broad outline and to fill in the details of the structure of each part as I go along. Sometimes, having an opening or a closing line can be enough to convince me that I am ready to start.
Is there any writing software you use?
Microsoft Word. I sometimes use Evernote to jot down ideas. Lots of scribbling paper to work things out while I am actually writing. I wish I were more analogue and had a writing diary – it feels more writerly somehow. I do keep a diary intermittently, but it’s usually a very morose monologue of things that have gone terribly in life.
How do you fit writing into your schedule?
I wish I were better at this, but the truth is that I’m driven by deadlines – not in the sense that I meet them (sometimes they whoosh past me before I even get started), but more in the sense that they have a sobering effect on me. I don’t write every day, but on some days, writing is the only thing that I do. There aren’t enough of those days though.
Do you enjoy the writing process?
Yes! I don’t think I’m a very disciplined writer, whatever that means. I have this vision of other people sitting at their desks and going at it non-stop, or doing wholesome things like staring out of windows at beautiful vistas or doing abdominal crunches while they think. I check my email or scroll on my phone or look at the news or walk around the room too often, which makes me wonder if modern life has been uniquely terrible for writing, but the job somehow gets done in a way that feels miraculous to me. There’s almost no correspondence (or at least I hope there isn’t) between how messy and chaotic the process is and what the finished product looks like.
Are there any tips you have for writing or editing your writing?
I enjoy being slightly ruthless with editing my own writing (of course, other people being ruthless with it is much less enjoyable). It makes me feel as if my brain is still working, although it is also unsettling to realise that one can think such different things at different points in time (who am I really?). Cutting adverbs has always been an easy win to hit desired word counts, but this makes me wonder what adverbs are for if they are so dispensable.
Are there any books on writers or writing that you have particularly enjoyed and would recommend?
Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, which is less about how to write (although it conveys this through sheer example) than about who can and cannot write and the conditions under which writing is (im)possible. It isn’t just about the room, of course. The ‘five hundred pounds a year’ is a useful reminder that sometimes one has to do other things to make writing possible. And that’s ok.