Shambhawi Tripathi: the (academic) writer

Shambhawi Tripathi is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the University of St Andrews. Her research seeks to engage emotional lives in magical realist fiction as a transformative “magical” way of doing global politics.

Do you see yourself as a writer?

I really do. I remember writing much before I knew what a writer was, or what benefits it could accrue. It is a medium I have loved all my life. I am a writer first and an academic second. As a PhD student, this is not a guiltless admission, but an honest one. The slow process of coming to terms with the fact that I care deeply about writing as a form of expression does not undermine the academic rigour of my writing, but outlines it. My loyalties lie with sentences, and I truly believe that the effort of seeding good, ripe sentences cultivates better, more generous worlds. What seeing myself as a writer first also enables is a humble confidence that while academia is where I currently place my research and life questions, there could be (and always are) worlds for holding and responding to these questions outside of it. Learning how to swim better in one pool only amplifies the curiosity about other, deeper waters.

Do you have a writing routine that works for you? Is there a particular time of the day or place you write best?

I am not someone who writes regularly at all. My writing routine usually involves spurts of intense writing followed by periods of not writing at all. I don’t recommend it, but this is how words come to me. My close friends fondly refer to my writing periods as the ‘puffin in burrow’, because I also need heaps of solitude to write. I really love that image, because it doesn’t mark my brief retreat from sociality as an ejection from the world, but rather recognises a distinct, muted way of being in it. I love being in the world too much for a total removal and I have found that, if you’re lucky, those around you can be better stewards of your solitude than you are. I cherish the relations which find ways of accompaniment even when the phone is off the hook, as Jane Kenyon would say. Even in the midst of deep writing, I am still taking walks, peering at wrens in shrubs, and searching for sea glass, often in company.

I often try to ask about the writing rituals of those whose writing I admire. I am endlessly curious about the ‘writing landscape’ of others,  and cherish the detailed descriptions that follow from such curiosity. I love reading, listening and recording the idiosyncratic moves and rituals that accompany writing. I have a close friend who loves writing when on trains; another who makes endless cups of tea. A third uses an app which automatically deletes everything they have written if they pause for over ten seconds (I know – this last friendship is under review). I have recently learnt that one of my favourite fiction writers, Elif Shafak, blasts metal music through her headphones to create a soundscape while writing. I promise that if you read her work, that is not the music you would associate with it. My writing landscape always starts out clinical – I need to declutter and create blank space in the room to invite the words in – but by the end of a writing day, the clinical almost always shapeshifts into the cosy; there are several throws, a paper with doodles, instrumental jazz in the background and an inordinate number of warm yellow lamps. Recently, I’ve noticed that I also take off my rings and earrings off and leave them on a coaster when I write. It’s a new ritual, and I’m still learning its strangeness, but that’s part of the joy.

What’s the hardest part of writing for you?

I remember reading once that the fear of writing comes from not having done enough living to write about. I couldn’t agree more. I think it is the living and making sense of the living that is often the hardest thing to do. I think I am most scared to write down how ordinary my life and thoughts are – and that’s a fear that is institutionalised by the academy’s insistence on producing ‘original’ work without reflecting deeply on what that means, or what other desires we might have for our writing. What I cherish about writing as a craft is that the antidote to the fear is often just pressing closer to it. If I’m scared that I haven’t done enough living to write about something, I try to live harder. That usually means cooking more elaborate dinners, taking more walks, reading more books, and turning my ears to the sea and my gaze towards the birds. The moreness fills me up and eventually demands another container – and then I write. Writing is only hard because I know I won’t want to stop once I begin. It’s a problem of moreness, rather than a lack. We could do with more problems like that.

How do you feel about the blank page when you’re starting a new project?

The poet Ellen Bass once likened the writer’s relation to the blank page as trudging through white snow. What a playful image of labour; it makes me smile every time I start a project. No matter how much writing I do, each time I start a chapter, I text my close friends to say that I don’t think I know how to write a sentence. (Note that my loyalties are still, and always will be, to sentences over arguments). My friends remind me that I’ve felt this way before and that it has never been true. There is something so believable about this repeated choreography; these reminders almost always dull the sharpness of self-doubt for me and allow me to begin. Over the last few years, I have also learnt to expand the idea of what counts as writing. My friends and I report to each other over texts: “Today, vacuuming the whole flat counts as writing”, “Today, editing that already edited paragraph counted as writing”, and so on. It started as a joke, but it is valuable to rethink and share the living that accompanies, interferes with, and gently cajoles our words into being.

What do you do when you get stuck?

I was recently part of a writing panel and someone from the audience asked this very question. While we shared some ‘practical’ ideas of how to unblock ourselves, I also found myself thinking about how much time we spend trying to mould our writing to our needs. I do not wish to undermine the overlapping pressures which loom over our writing – this week, in addition to writing this blog, I am writing up a postdoc application, a conference proposal, and editing a thesis chapter – but I also don’t want to submit to them uncritically. I’m curious about why we are so resistant to accepting the seasonality of writing, especially in the academy. Why is a ‘good’ academic so close to the capitalist image of ceaseless production? Some of my favourite things in life – peonies, puffins, mangoes – are all seasonal joys, and I await their return each year. I’m learning how to let writing also be part of that chorus, so that I can relish it when it happens, and trust that it will return again.

Do you enjoy the writing process?

The genre I am trying to write in, and where my words are being directed towards, has a bearing on how much I enjoy the process. I also think that there is very little incentive built into the PhD process to enjoy and nurture the process of writing which is truly lamentable, because it is such a big part of what we do. In my academic writing, I argue for retaining room for magic. But it is also exhausting to always be indignant. In an attempt to remind myself that there are other – softer, less argumentative – registers of writing I want to cultivate, I now write monthly long-form essays on my Substack. My intention was to recall how it feels to write something that could resonate with, rather than convince, a reader. It is bringing me great joy to slow-think and build these essays in the notes app on my phone.

Writing things other than the thesis always feels a bit wrong, but I can see how the joy I feel from the freedom of writing in one register seeps into and encourages other registers. My academic writing voice is slowly befriending my other voices. Regardless of genre, having a loose framework at the start, and allowing myself to be surprised by what comes together at the end, is indeed a thing of joy.

Are there any tips you have for writing or editing your writing?

I think the most important tip I can offer is to not start from a place of having already failed – to meet a deadline, to read everything, to say something intelligent. We quite often come to our writing already feeling defeated. The institutional framework turns doubt into fault so fast that it usurps all the space for wonder and discovery. I have found that if we loosen our grip just a little and permit ourselves to consider what we would say if we weren’t trying so hard to say ‘that one thing’, the writing process becomes far more rewarding.

I am responding to these questions on the back of having written the last substantive chapter of my thesis, and I can see how that marks my responses with more hope than fear. I welcome that posture because I know that it is fleeting. I also think that is exactly why it is crucial to fully inhabit those moments of well-earned rest, and the stillness that seeps into the skin slowly after releasing words into the world. The writer Elena Ferrante says that, for her, writing isn’t an elegant exercise, but rather a convulsive one. I feel the same way: I often write when I can’t stand to not write any more. There is a sense of brimming over which is almost physical, and always magical.