Reading time: About 3 minutes
Kailash Srinivasan says he doesn’t like rules when it comes to writing, and he believes it is neither glamourous nor filled with suffering…
Kailash Srinivasan was born and raised in India and is now living in Vancouver, B.C. His writing often explores fractures of all kinds—personal, societal, economic, religious, and political. He also writes about injustice and inequality. His prose and poetry have appeared in several Canadian and international literary journals, including Ex-Puritan, CBC Books, Identity Theory, Handwritten & Co., Midway Journal, Snarl, Hunger, XRAY, Coachella Review, Selkie, Antilang, Oyster River Pages, Sidereal, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Bad Nudes, and Lunch Ticket.
In 2024, Kailash won The Writers’ Union of Canada’s Annual Short Prose Competition and was featured in CBC Books’ Writers to Watch. His work has been shortlisted for the Malahat Review Open Season Awards Fiction 2024, CBC Short Story Prize 2024, Bridport Prize for Fiction 2023, Bristol Short Story Prize 2022, Into the Void Fiction Prize 2019, and longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize 2023 and Bath Short Story Award. He received an honorable mention in the Craft First Chapters Contest 2023and was runner-up in the 2022 Prime Number Magazine Awards for Poetry & Short Fiction. Currently, he is working on his first novel and a short story collection.
I was excited to talk to Kailash about how he approaches writing.
Q. Roughly how much time do you spend writing every day?
Every day? Ha, I wish. I have that itch, though, every now and then, where I try to write daily—sometimes, that’s an Instagram post, a quick character sketch while on the bus, a little poem, or an observation I’ll note down on my phone. But that itch also fades quickly as I work full time. These days, I’m a weekend writer. Will that change? Probably. Also, I don’t like rules when it comes to writing.
Q. What’s a simple activity or habit that makes you a better writer?
Fiercely protecting my writing time, which is a luxury and privilege I don’t take for granted. And writing even when I think my words are bad/lousy/abominable.
Q. What interferes with your writing?
My obsessive email checking driven by my delusion that something exciting is going to land in my inbox at any moment. And be disappointed when it’s just another phone bill, a payment confirmation or a store reminding me I have forgotten something in my cart. And social media, which can sometimes swallow entire days.
Q.How do you persuade yourself to sit down to write on days when you really, really DON’T feel like doing it?
That usually only happens on days when I ignore my own ‘one last drink’ rule and wake up regretting it. Otherwise, I’m good with showing up for myself.
Q. Is there a particular motto or saying that you’ve found helpful for writing?
“The only way out is through”– Robert Frost. I take it as: The only way to finish your short story, poem, novel, play, or whatever you’re working on is to keep going.
Also, “That’s all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.” – Raymond Carver.
Q. Which stage of the writing process do you enjoy the most: researching, writing or editing/rewriting and why?
Every stage is equally important and can’t exist without the other. If you don’t research, you have nothing to write; if you don’t write, you have nothing to edit. That said, I don’t like to stay stuck in one phase for too long. If editing a longer piece starts to drain me, I’ll jump to writing a short story. If that wears me out, I’ll get into rewriting an older piece. I keep moving, keep shifting.
Q. What’s one of the best books you’ve read (either fiction or non) in the last five years? [If you can’t narrow it down to one, please don’t give any more than three.]
The best books, to me, are the ones that stay with me weeks or even months later, books where I still remember the characters, the writing, the way they made me feel, and how often I bring them up in conversation. By that standard, I loved Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. I remember reading it on my bus rides to work and fighting back tears more times than I can admit. Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You and Raven Leilani’s Luster are also right up there. Both capture modern relationships with incisiveness and emotional depth.
Q. What book are you reading right now?
Pure Colour by Shelia Heiti.
Q. What do you think is the biggest misperception that new writers have about the act of writing?
That writing is either easy or impossibly hard. That it’s either glamorous or filled with suffering. That it will either flow effortlessly or feel like pulling teeth. But the truth is—it’s all of these things. Some days, you’re winning an award. Some days, you’re getting another rejection. Some days, the words pour out effortlessly; other days, it feels like you may never write another story. As a writer, you must learn to get comfortable with this discomfort.
