Twinkle Khanna Gets Candid About Digital Reading, Writer's Block And More

by | October 21, 2020, 19:21 IST

Like a boss. 

Photograph: Dabboo RatnaniTwinkle 1

Her digital venture Tweak turned one last month, she’s just launched an imprint (Tweak Books), and along with it, two new books (in association with Juggernaut, titled When I Grow Up I Want To Be... and What’s in your Dabba), and all this while she’s been operating remotely from Scotland for the past two months – is there anything Twinkle Khanna can’t do? We spoke to Mrs Funnybones on everything from navigating the digital world, technology, and start-up advice.
GRAZIA: How do you, as the founder of a new-age digital content company, capture the joy of being able to dive into the written word online?

TWINKLE KHANNA: Tweak was designed by and for people immersed in the world of words. There are certain things you have to keep in mind when writing for an online audience, like length and snackable content interspersed with longer reads, but the skill-set required to write a novel, a column, or for an online platform is the same.

G: How exactly does the technology we use to read change the way we read?

TK: I believe that our brain has evolved in a manner that it knows what to retain and discard. What we read online doesn’t seem to stick in our memories in the same way as reading a physical book. It could be because, subconsciously, we know that it can be retrieved through a search, or it could be that reading a physical copy, there are more senses involved, including the tactility of turning pages or, sometimes, underlining sentences. Like Douglas Adams said, ‘Books are sharks...there were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark.’ I may run a digital platform, but I have to be honest and say very few things can beat the experience of reading a physical book.

G: Would you say the pandemic has afforded readers the flexibility to consume new kinds of writing in the digital space?

TK: The pandemic, along with the disasters it has brought in its wake, has also allowed us to experiment with the way we work and live in a manner that has never been explored before. Consuming unfamiliar forms of content is just a small part of that ecosystem.

G: It isn’t all unicorns and rainbows with digital reading. Despite the gradual shift online, exacerbated by recent events, are there any potential downsides?

TK: The potential downside is we are all becoming a species filled with information, without enough time to assimilate that into knowledge, let alone wisdom.

G: The digital space is fast-paced and, at times, unforgiving. How do you drive traffic to your website without compromising content quality?

TK: Hire good writers and nurture them. We have a wonderful team, and we also spent almost a year before the launch defining what we stand for and how we are going to present our stories.

Tweak Books has two books under its umbrella – What’s In your Dabba and When I Grow Up, I Want To Be...Twinkle 2
G: What’s your current state of mind?

TK: Based on my growling stomach, at the moment, I would say hungry pretty much sums up all my emotions at this point.

G: A line on how you introduce yourself...

TK: I sing a rather familiar nursery rhyme.

G: What gets you out of bed each morning?

TK: I don’t get out of bed. These days I work from there – a pillow masquerading as my desk.

G: First-mover advantage or never too late to start anything?

TK: The latter, because you can then learn a lot from all the potholes the first mover will invariably find himself tripping over.

G: What’s the best and worst comment you’ve received for your writing?

TK: I have been writing for a long time and I now realise that both bouquets and brickbats are all momentary. In fact, I wrote a short piece once about how a dog is lauded for being a hero and then almost immediately falls from grace. It is an allegory for bipeds as well.

G: Have you ever had writer’s block?

TK: If you are asking me about all the times I have ever wanted to smash my head against the wall in the hope that a tiny piece of my brain accidentally falls onto the page, then yes, I have experienced the dreaded writer’s block often enough.

G: What does a work crisis look like for you?

TK: It could range anywhere from small tremors like our platform crashing, which it did when we had a story called A Dummy’s Guide to Your Vagina or racing against a column deadline when I also have to ensure that my child has finished all her virtual school assignments, to an earthquake somewhere around a 7.9 on the Richter scale, like bouncing cheques and dropped contracts.

G: What’s the best business advice you’d offer a start-up?

TK: Be agile – it’s your biggest advantage. I remember hearing a Ted Talk about the advantage that a nimble David had over a lumbering Goliath and its equivalence to what a start-up has over big corporations, and it is a bit that has stayed with me for a long time.

G: One quote you’d like to be remembered by.

TK: Nothing in life is sacred except laughter.
TWINKLE KHANNA’S READY RECKONER

WEBSITES 

The New Yorker
www.newyorker.com

Smithsonian Magazine
www.smithsonianmag.com

Lightspeed Magazine
lightspeedmagazine.com

The Cut
www.thecut.com

Mental Floss
www.mentalfloss.com

BOOKS

Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo

Too Much Happiness, Alice Munro

Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry

My Sister, The Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite

Invisible Planets: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese, Ken Liu

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