If like Shashi Deshpande you have wondered about the why, how and what you want to write, here’s a collection of essays that attempts to demystify “that peculiar activity called writing”. With great personal honesty, Indian and international novelists, poets, dramatists, scriptwriters, humorists, columnists and translators, whether renowned award-winners, experienced professionals, or rising stars of the literary scene, contribute useful (and often surprising) insights into their respective genres. Be it writing about sex, or writing noir, writing about food or for the screen, writing about psychopaths or fantasy fiction or for children, let those who have been through the agony and the ecstasy, the delights and the pitfalls, guide you. Though there is no one way of writing—a vocation individualistic and idiosyncratic like no other—and each writer will have to find his or her own way, the twenty-six essays in this anthology will provide a roadmap on navigating what Martin Amis describes as a “deeply mysterious process”.