After Effects of NaNoWriMo

This morning I wrote a blog post on my recent effort in the National Novel Writing Month aka NaNoWriMo. I mentioned how thrilled I was to complete it successfully for the fifth successive year.

In this post I wish to dwell on the after effects:)

• What you  seee before you id the editied version. (sic) Nothing proves a point more than a demonstration. What I meant to key in was, “What you see before you is the edited version.” Yes, banging away thousands of words per day with a tight deadline does that to you, at least it does that to me. Many typographical errors erupt like a particularly severe attack of acne as your mind works faster than your fingers can fly. Your mind has moved on to the next sentence while your fingers can barely keep up. Therefore you have, as per my theory, so many typos. It takes a while for you to slow down. A while before you get back the accuracy of your keying in which has become a casualty in your recently acquired quest for speed.
• There’s also a void in your life. Seriously. For one whole month NaNoWriMo took over your schedules and grabbed the highest priority. Several other assignments remained incomplete, others fell by the wayside while you focused on attaining your goal to  write 50,000 words during the month of November. Now you need to pick up the projects you looked away from, those that emerge as being high priority now that the frenetic activity of NaNoWriMo is over. Believe me, you do feel kind of lost for the first few days. But do write a bit every day. That’s the discipline that NaNoWriMo teaches you, which can stay with you for the rest of your life.
• You haven’t written those 50,000 + words just for the heck of it. You will do your best, I am sure, to complete the novel in all respects. It means a huge amount of work now that you have laid the foundation for your novel. The editing, the fine tuning, the building up of your NaNo Novel starts now. But wait. I would recommend you take a break. Set it aside for a month or so, then come back to it afresh. You will see it differently. You will pick up from where you left off.

In my experience, after NaNoWriMo it takes anywhere between one to two years to get your novel published. So when people say, ” You completed NaNoWriMo successfully? Oh, wow! When and where do we turn up for the book launch?” You need to take a deep breath and say NaNoWriMo was just the start. You have heaps to do before that novel sees the  light of day as a published book.

My best wishes to you for your effort to get that NaNo novel published.

Survey on Historical Fiction

Thanks to my long-standing interest in historical fiction I connected with the author, MK Tod. I follow Mary’s tweets @MKTodAuthor and she pointed me to a very interesting survey she has been conducting which seeks to find out what makes historical fiction buffs love this genre. You will find a lot of information on this in her blog A Writer of History.

Alternate History

There is huge excitement in the air for many of us writers as November fast approaches. I have successfully completed NaNoWriMo for four consecutive years, from 2009 to 2012 and am very keen to make it 5 in 5 by successfully completing a NaNo novel in November 2013 too. This involves writing 50,000 words of a novel during the calendar month of November. The novel can be in any literary genre.

Juggling Between Projects

It’s demanding. It’s tiring. It’s crazy…but it’s fun! It is exhilarating to work on multiple projects as I am now doing. To look at it chronologically, I still do whatever I can to boost my debut novel, a psychological thriller called, “It Can’t Be You”. This was published in November 2010. I am awaiting the publication of my second thriller, “Lucky For Some, Thirteen.” This should be out in the shops in June-July 2012. I am waiting for it to be available on a pre-order basis on Flipkart first.

Lines from “It Can’t Be You”

Yesterday, at the Pan South India Alumni Meet of XLRI at the grand ITC Gardenia

Tips For Aspiring Authors

Some people were talking to me recently at a party. The topic turned to writing as a full-time profession. A young man said,”It must be fun to live the good life, earning so much that you just write all day long, which anyway is something you love doing.”  I said, “I am doing this as a second career after retirement. Don’t forget I worked for more than 35 years as a professional before taking to writing.” I went on to say, “You have to be a top-notch writer, with a few lucky breaks thrown in for good measure, to be able to live only on the strength of your earnings through your writing.” I don’t mean to be discouraging but a lot of people in India, especially the young, seem to have too rosy a picture of the field of writing. They have a lot of spirit , which I greatly admire but sometimes in their enthusiasm lose sight of some harsh realities.

“A Toast To Plum: Celebrating P.G.Wodehouse”- An Update

This writing project has gone for a toss! It was so dear to my heart and I had great hopes of it becoming a published book that Wodehouse fans the world over would enjoy. However, the plan seems to have become unstuck. I failed in my attempt to persuade the Trustees of the Wodehouse Estate to grant permission for its eventual publication. They didn’t seem to have been impressed by my preliminary inquiry. Perhaps I should have made out a formal book proposal.

What’s Cooking? Current Projects.

I was updating my profile at Author Central at Amazon.com, UK when it struck me that I was working on a number of very different projects. I thought I would share what’s cooking with you today:

Writing Fiction Is Hard Work!

So you want to be a fiction writer? Congratulations but so do a million others. All of them don’t make the grade. It is easy to get carried away with the images of huge success. Everyone dreams of churning out best-sellers that feature on the New York Times, getting that incredible advance that make eyes pop out and wallowing in luxury as you write from your  exclusive writer’s den in some exotic place.

On Vacation

My wife and I leave for a trip to the US in a couple of weeks time. My blog posts will be infrequent for the next few months.

Please bear with me. Will be posting updates on my Facebook Page.