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Pawan Mishra

Goodreads Author

Born

in Aligarh, India

Website

https://www.pawanmishra.com

Twitter

pawwyymishra

Genre

Fiction, Nonfiction, Psychology

Influences

Work & its absurdities, Machines & being human, Indian History, Langua ...more

Member Since

August 2015

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/pawanmishra

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Pawan Mishra is an Indian-American author and storyteller writing in Hindi and English.
He grew up in Aligarh, India — one of seven siblings, the son of a schoolteacher — and
studied Mathematics and Computing at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. His
debut novel, Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy, a satire of office politics in small-town
northern India, won the 2016 eLit Book Award for Literary Fiction and the Readers'
Favorite International Award, and was a finalist for the NIEA Award for Humor and IAN Book of the Year. Kirkus Reviews called it “an absurdist tale of office and personal
politics.” Beyond the page, he produced and directed the animated series My Teacher
Hilda (Amazon Prime Video) and the short film The Smart Phone Story. He i ...more

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Dear Pawan, can you give us more insight into Coinman. Do you think reading a lot of books, subdues the original style of a writer?

Pawan Mishra Hi Vadwlas - that's a great question about the style of a writer. But first about Coinman :)

I started on Coinman in 2003 as a creative writing pursuit…moreHi Vadwlas - that's a great question about the style of a writer. But first about Coinman :)

I started on Coinman in 2003 as a creative writing pursuit resulting from someone's request for a story about his colleague who had a quirk that had plagued the office they worked for. As I started writing, I realized that the subject needed a more elaborate treatment -- it thus turned into a full length novel. It was completed in 2007 but I hadn't planned to publish it until early 2015.

At the center of the novel is a small office in a small city in North India. The office has a mammoth gossiping culture -- where most of the gossips are around invented stories about Coinman, a nonconformist whose peculiar quirk irritates them alike. It seems all fine until they plan to get rid of the issue.

Having spent first 20 years of my life in the small town of Aligarh in UP, I had a privilege of seeing life in a small city very closely. Wandering through every possible narrow street in the city and interacting with every possible type of character opened up a beautiful inner world in my mind that found a way to open itself through this book.

I hope this is enough without revealing the plot much :)

Now to your other question -- but a small disclaimer first. It may be a subject of a good debate and there is no black & white answer -- but this is what I have experienced.

When you start reading, you get influenced a lot by what you are reading. First comes the genre. If you keep reading across genres, over years your true love starts showing -- that is, you keep getting inclined towards certain genre(s) that appeal to you more particularly. Then you end up picking more books in that genre. It's after this point that you start getting influenced by individual styles of authors. You feel like your style is getting modified too -- by way of appreciation for styles of certain authors -- and you are right. The solution is -- keep reading more and more. And in the end, you are so used to reading and looking at authors' styles objectively that you can pretty much see them very isolated from your own.

In short -- when we start reading/ thinking, our style is not formed yet. So when we read something that has extraordinary style, we get overly influenced, and the style may reflect in our writing. But when we keep reading, lot and lot and lot more, the style continuously forms by maturing itself at every point -- eventually to a point where you see it as you see 2+2=4.

Hope that helps.(less)

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What’s the best thing about being a writer?

Pawan Mishra You can design a whole new world through the setting and the characters in your book--whatever way you think it would please you and your readers. You…moreYou can design a whole new world through the setting and the characters in your book--whatever way you think it would please you and your readers. You live several lives through your characters. You can go beyond the reality and can also exaggerate or extrapolate behaviors of people you meet in real life. The absence of the boundaries that we face in our day-to-day life only multiplies this joy!(less)

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Pawan Mishra’s books

Average rating: 3.81 · 304 ratings · 147 reviews · 7 distinct works • Similar authors

	Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy 3.82 avg rating — 270 ratings — published 2015 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	On Writing Wonderfully: The Craft of Creative Fiction Writing 3.68 avg rating — 34 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Window to Young Minds by Lune Spark (Compiler), Pawan Mishra (Goodreads Author) (Introduction) 4.14 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2017 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Lemonade Stand by Tamar Bobokhidze (Goodreads Author), Salome Eqizashvili (Illustrator), Pawan Mishra (Goodreads Author) (Contributor) 4.33 avg rating — 6 ratings — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Lampyrid of Desires 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Living Thread 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mother's Day by Tamar Bobokhidze (Goodreads Author), Salome Eqizashvili (Illustrator), Pawan Mishra (Goodreads Author) (Contributor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Pawan Mishra's Blog: Pawan Mishra Blogs

My 2018 Oscar Predictions

[image error]I just completed my Oscar backlog and guess still have an hour to post my predictions

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Published on March 04, 2018 16:39

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Pawan Mishra has read The Emotional Embodiment of Stars by Lucy Liversidge	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Sep 23, 2024 04:23PM · like

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Quotes by Pawan Mishra (?)

“A man wants too many things before marriage, but only peace after it.”
― Pawan Mishra, Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy

tags: funny, humor, husband, longing, marriage, marriage-advice, marriage-humor, marriage-issues, peace, relationship, want, wife

40 likes

“You are the biggest enemy of your own sleep.”
― Pawan Mishra

“Isn’t life a collection of weird quizzes with no answers to half the questions?”
― Pawan Mishra, Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy

tags: ambiguity, answers, confusion, helplessness, life, puzzle, questions, quiz

26 likes

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