Twinkle Khanna: A writer needs an inflated sense of self-worth

Actress-turned-author Twinkle Khanna feels a writer needs an inflated sense of self-worth while writing.

"I strongly believe in the power of being the moron. I wrote about it last week. People who think about their stupidity are often the most intelligent because it is only the truly dumb who are convinced of their smartness. The ones who are secretly wondering if they are idiots are the ones who know that there is so much to know that they clearly don't know enough. If you have understood this sentence and if you are clearly a moron like me, you are a prime example of an oxymoron," declared Twinkle, while interacting with the media at Crossword Book Awards 2020.

She was accompanied by lifestyle coach and motivational speaker Gaur Gopal Das and philanthropist Sudha Murty at the event.

At the event, Twinkle received the Crossword Book Award (Popular) for Fiction for the book 'Pyjamas Are Forgiving'.

Sharing her thoughts on winning the award, Twinkle said: "I am thankful to Crossword for this award. I may not deserve it but I didn't deserve a name like Twinkle either (laughs). It's not that the names I have come up with since then have been any better — like Mrs Funnybones and even Baba Twink Dev. Now I have to coin yet another monicker, if for nothing else then to say that I am following the path of Susan Swanton who said that 'a writer has to be four people — a nut, a moron, a stylist and a critic'. Now nut comes easy to me. It's the path that dreams up all these ideas and then puts this unfiltered nonsense and regurgitates it on to paper which masquerades as my first draft."

Twinkle said a writer needs to have an inflated sense of self-worth while writing. "(Being a) Stylist is, I guess, the difference between using a word like regurgitate instead of vomit. (On being a) critic, this is the most important part because a writer needs to have an inflated sense of self-worth while they are writing, to feel that what they are saying is worthy of someone else's attention. Then they have to have the ability to put their ego aside, look at that work objectively and, yes, listen to the editors, take their suggestion, and incorporate them, because I think that is the most important (thing) a writer needs to do," she said.

"Pyjamas Are Forgiving" is a 2018 Indian fiction novel published by Juggernaut Books. The story is narrated by Anshu, a middle-aged woman who is suffering from sleep disorder.

Late Rajesh Khanna and Dimple Kapadia's elder daughter Twinkle is married actor Akshay Kumar, They have a son, Aarav and a daughter, Nitara.

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( With inputs from IANS )