A tough choice

Should you do:

1. What you want to do?
2. What you think your audience wants you to do?
3. What your audience actually wants?

It’s a tough choice, isn’t it? I think the best thing that can happen is for #1 and #3 to coincide.

My fingers are crossed.

NanoRebel

NanoRebel:

A NaNo Rebel is a NaNoWriMo participant who chooses to write something besides a novel of at least 50,000 words from scratch in November. Some NaNo rebels choose to continue a novel by invoking the Zokutou clause, while others wander into the worlds of nonfiction, video games, scripts, and academic writing.

Thought for the day

Experience and treachery will always triumph over youth and enthusiasm

- Anonymous (a.k.a. I don’t know yet)

Lightning on the wave

Limyaael.

Have you heard about her? Read about her at least?

She has written a few books, and the one I am reading right now is  her Harry Potter fan fiction: Saving Connor

I normally don’t go after fan fiction, but let me tell you – Limyaael is different. This book is extremely well written. In fact, I can almost challenge you – try and stop reading after the first two chapters. If you like the original HP series, I am sure you won’t be able to.

Ah yes, she was also an extremely opinionated person who regularly dished out “rants” – 424 of them to be precise. And then one day, she disappeared off the face of the internet. No one knows what happened. But wherever she is, I am sure that she is living a happy life – after all, so many people have her in their hearts.

Emptiness

If you had one room for your own – one empty room to begin with – how would you decorate it?

A sofa set or a lounger? An LCD TV or a Home Theater system? Or both? A gathering place for friends, or a place to seek solitude?

Let me tell you how I would do it.

The room will have a muted color on the walls. If you peek out of the French windows, a small path will lead your eyes through a lush green lawn to the wooden fence. At the end of the fence will be a pool full of white lotuses, with a small bridge going from one side to the other – just wide enough for the little animals to use.

Inside the room, the atmosphere would be more spartan. In one corner would be a shelf with a small selection of books. By its side, a laptop with my favorite music and movies. And oh yes, a pair of headphones too. In another corner would be a French Press, a jar of fine Arabica and a set of coffee cups.

Finally, a small portable lamp in case you want to read when it’s dark outside.

Books, music and coffee – if that won’t get you satisfaction, nothing else will.

Growing up

Bored, frustrated, irritated, cross, angry and any other similar adjective that you can think of. And when you are in such a mood, what better can you do than listen to some music? I pulled together a quick playlist and Metallica started singing “To Live is to Die.”

As I listened to it, I suddenly realized that there are so many things that I haven’t done in a long time:

• Sitting by the window, just watching the rain fall
• Getting lost in a book
• Staring at ants going about their business
• Laughing to your heart’s content
• Counting the rain drops on the leaves after a shower
• Admiring the innards of a machine

When will I do any of these next? I don’t know, but if it does happen I’ll write about it for sure.

Promise.

Creating magic

When I was 15, I took a summer class for learning “magic”. A magician based out of Pune taught us a few basic tricks – turning a handkerchief into an egg, changing the color of a hat, memory tricks with cards and multi-colored discs – the works. Armed with this knowledge, I had even conducted a 15 minute “magic show” in my school.

17 years later, I seek to create a different kind of magic.

A fantasy world exists in my mind – a world full of magic, wizards, sentient forests and evil – lingering evil that doesn’t quite manifest itself materially, but the kind that eats into you and makes you uneasy and keeps you that way.

It’s been so many years since I’ve been trying to bring this world out of my mind and onto paper, only to encounter writer’s block again and again.

This is the magic that I am trying to create. And yes, I am not going to give up until I complete it.

How flexible is your shoe size?

If you are a regular visitor here, you probably know that I have been struggling with my book for a long time now. If you aren’t (or if you don’t know), well – I’ve told you.

The last analysis that I did led me to conclude that I need to re-think the plot and possibly get started all over again. While I have been doing that, I still do not have a sufficient comfort level about the whole thing. What could be lacking now? Let’s see…

• Re-develop the plot – check
• Rewrite the story – check
• Do the character sketches – hmmmmm…

So that’s where the current problem lies! I have started working on it, but then that’s only step 1. Once the character sketches are complete, I need to immerse myself in them – at least enough to know my characters inside out. To be able to know what each character will do in a given scenario: the words that they will use, their body language, their facial expressions, everything. If I don’t have a grip on this – for each character – I don’t think I’ll be able to write the story, let alone make it believable.

Ergo, here are the targets for the next two weeks:

1. Complete the character sketches
2. Absorb them all so that I can step into anyone’s shoes at the drop of a hat

Thought for the day

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

-  Jack London

Where’s that book?

It’s been a long time since I’ve started working on my book. It first began with a longer story (which I am still hopeful that I’ll finish someday). A couple of months ago, I started working on a compendium of short stories.

The stories are there in my head – right down to the last detail, but somehow I am unable to bring them out on paper. Not sure whether it is writer’s block or something else – but the words just won’t come out. I am stuck in the opening scene, not sure what’s going wrong.

So I think I will try a different approach now.

Rather than completing the story one scene at a time, I think I will go ahead and create a first draft – a rough draft. Hopefully, with enough iterations, I should be able to bring it to life.

And more importantly, during this exercise, I will hopefully find out why is it that my longer book is languishing.