Arun was nervous for his performance in front of the live audience. He had given numerous performances in front of familiar people in familiar setting, at home, in a party or at the college fest, but never in front of an audience full of unknown faces. Not just any audience but one who have paid to come and watch him perform. The pressure was enormous. Arun was beginning to feel it.

It is not the stage that he was frightened of. He had been a born performer right from the age of five when he first picked up the guitar. It is the setting which had made him nervous. Arun is familiar with the setting; he has been there, but on the other side of the fence. He has been a part of the audience on numerous occasions when bands from all over the country and world have come to perform.

There is always that crowd of a few hundred thousands who have been waiting in mile long queues that look like a long meandering river which can be seen turning and disappearing behind the curb. Arun had been with his friends at such concerts camping out all night near the grounds, much before the sun has risen past the towering city skyline at a distance to get as much in front as possible and look at their favourite star as closely as possible. As the gates to the ground open all the civility is lost and the animal within comes to the fore and there is a mad rush to get in. It’s chaotic. The scene from far would look as somebody has poked a hole in a packet of grains and they begin to pour out in all directions.

Once inside the ground you begin to lose your senses, first it is your sense of space – you feel like a lemon through the squeezer, like somebody is trying to stuff and close a suitcase which is already overflowing with clothes. The bodies piling up on to each other as the hugs wrench out any air that is left in you. Then the sense of touch – there is excruciating pain from the stamp of the pointed heel of a scantily clad, starry eyed damsel jumping and crying out loud the name of her favourite star, there is numbness in the foot, you don’t know if you are standing or sitting, you can hardly feel anything. Then you lose your voice — you want to scream only to realize how quickly it drowns in the din of the crowd. You are shouting in pain but maybe they all are too, mistaken by people around as the yearning for the star. Then you lose your vision – the prick from the sharp yellow halogen lights that come on leaves you dazzled. You blink a million times to assure yourself that you can still see and it is not the last vision before everything fades, but then it actually does, the lights go out. The arrival of the star is announced. He walks straight to the microphone and shouts. The atomic bomb like sound bursts through the towering wooden speakers set on either side of the stage to give a surround feel. That is when you lose your sense of hearing.

Arun knew that side of the story. He had been at many such concerts and in spite of all the sensory simulations he enjoyed them. Today he was not among the audience but the star who was about to perform, but it felt scarily similar. He was alone backstage but felt claustrophobic; he could not feel anything, not hear anything. His name was announced and there were screams of joy. He walked through the darkness into the light at the end of the tunnel; he was blinded by the lights but walked straight to the cylindrical headed microphone. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and tried to focus. Slowly it began to all come back. He could hear his heart beat; he felt a rush of fresh air run through his nostrils, he could see the vision of himself standing at the edge of a razor sharp cliff, the searing pain in his heart made its way through the epiglottis that relaxed him.

I reach out to the sky
Hoping to touch the moon
I clasp my hand
There is nothing but air
The desire to touch you
Is only a desire in vain

He was alive. There was thunderous clap.

No this article is not about a list of phrases or idioms on thinking but a general thought on thinking. Thinking is a good exercise for your brain. It keeps you fresh. In today’s world as much emphasis is put on physical exercise it is also important that there be emphasis on the mental exercise.

In a gym you have a number of equipment that help you exercise different parts of your body. So what equipment do you have in your mental gym. You don’t need much actually a wonderful book to read in your comfy chair, a scenic place where you can gaze into the horizon, or the soothing music emancipating from the speakers of your home theater or just the empty silence of the night as you count the sheep to sleep. Everyone has their own special place in their heart to go to relieve the mind of the stress that it might be in.

I tend to do a mix of all of that plus maybe some more things, like thinking about those beautiful moments of my life when I was happy or just building a perfect world of my own, brick by brick. Thinking of those magnificent forest, beautiful palaces, amazing wild creatures or the wonderful people that I meet in that perfect world. They make me feel alive. They refresh my mind.

I think that is what keeps my mind ticking and racing. The thoughts are too fast, too many and I kind of struggle to keep up with them in my writing. I at times feel at loss of words — literally I feel my vocabulary is lacking and I am unable to describe in my writing the images from my thoughts. It keeps me awake even when I am asleep as I sift through dictionaries or search online for the right word. It has to be perfect you know in every which way. These thoughts are for my Epic novel.

Yes an epic — that is what my next project is. All I have been thinking till now is how to start the writing. It’s been more than 6 months since I last sat with my epic thoughts. The last time I sat with it, I designed the cover for it [ Aryan: The Prince is Born. ]. It’s been 216 days since. Not sure how far this would go, or will I be able to take the story forward. Well I at least have a page now and that is a start. There will also be an end someday. Till then I don’t mind being lost in my thoughts. After all it’s the best mental gym for my mind.

There is a scene very early in the film when JJ is frustrated at not being able to make it big and Khatana, the canteen owner (Kumud Mishra) where JJ frequents, tells him that the only way JJ can produce melody is if he undergoes trauma via a heartbreak.

I thought about that statement and was wondering if what Khatana was saying was true? Do you really need to feel the pain of a heartbreak to rise to dizzying heights of creativity. Is that the Oomph factor or the X-factor as we like to call it that makes or breaks the career of a creative soul? Do creative people excel only when they have been through some tragedy in life?

I spent a lot of time pondering over the question. Being a writer myself I should have been able to answer it easily but I am not so sure. When I took to writing there was no pain, nothing tragic, I was lured in by the love for creating and telling stories. I read great stories and always marveled at the thought process behind such wonderful creation. I loved poetry specially the ability to write beautiful layered poetry with simple words. The daffodils by Wordsworth simply brilliant. Nothing fancy plain old English and yet you can connect at different levels.

I have had such flashes of thoughts in my poetry and my writing but they have been too few and far apart to be of any significance. I wonder if my writing would have improved or my poetry more melodious and lyrical had I suffered a heart break. I mean I did have my fair share of heartbreaks. One could argue that such those were not real heartbreaks and the pain I suffered was my own doing. I talked to myself and moved on. Not really lingering long enough to feel the pain.

Therefore I cannot claim to know how pain transforms your creative instinct. Though I do feel that if you have a creative instinct it does become an avenue for you to vent your anger and that could be through paint, music or words. I can find a hint of some of that anger in some of my works during that period however they are inconclusive to me.

I hope I never go through that pain, but then not having gone through it, would it affect the limits of my creativity? Time will tell.

Now that the event is over and I have completed a good 50000 words of unadulterated writing fun, I can breathe. I can relax for a while. Look back at the month that just passed by with some satisfaction. I had achieved what I had set out to. No, the goal was not to complete a novel, a month is too short a time to write a good novel, at least for me it is. The goal was to get my love for writing back, to be able to show to myself that I still can write.

There are still self doubts on my ability to write fluently, well constructed sentences, use of punctuation, proficiency of English language, depth of vocabulary and many more. But, I know I can work upon them, one at a time. One month of writing has given me the confidence that one day I would be a decent writer, who would be able to translate a thought into words and be able to do some justice to them.

I love reading and writing stories, I want to write more and more of them because my mind is full of them. I wish there were 48 hours in a day and many hands just to put them down. Well I guess you have 24 hrs and a pair of hand so that you write the best and the most interesting ones. I have to make a choice and my next is an epic. It is a long story. I know for sure I will never be able to complete it and never be able to publish it, but I will write it, for myself.

Thank you NaNoWriMo for igniting the flame once again and bringing me back to what I love doing — Writing.

30 Days of uninhibited writing can only be good. I spent the entire month of October in visualizing and preparing for the event. I read through some of the best pep talks I have read in a while and set about planning my writing sprints. I did some bit of writing practice while putting together my professional blog and read through great bit of resources around the internet and fiction and non-fiction books at my disposal.

Some of the advice I got have been very helpful in overcoming writer blocks that are bound to happen in a writing marathon like this. I will try to share them as I go along.

My aim for today was to write 5000 words as it was a holiday today in Bangalore and I might not get as much time during rest of the week, hence a decent start always comes in handy. I finished with 4041 words, which was much beyond my expectation actually. before I talk more about my day I would like to highlight the story that I have planned to write.

The novel I have chosen to write is in the romantic genre and is title — “Letters from across the street”. The story is set in modern urban India which is progressing at a fast pace, people are too busy going about their lives to notice love blossoming between two complete strangers who spend hours everyday looking at each other from across the street. Yet they do not have the courage to cover the short distance of a few feet that lay between them. One fine morning a letter arrives, it is from the stranger across the street. What are the contents of the letter? Will they have the courage to cover the short distance? and Will they confess their love?

I have designed a cover for the novel which can be found — here

It always motivates you to have an image or the end goal in front of you as it eggs you on to do your targets, hence I designed the cover.

The first day started off really well for me with 1600 words out-of-the-way in less than two hours in the morning, the next 1500 words took about 10 hours and the last 1000 words about 30 mins. So I realized, it is not going to be smooth sailing all the way and would need me to focus more at different times of the day to meet my goals. Hopefully I will be able to apply my learning in the coming days.

Now that I have some pages of the story already written, the characters of my novel are beginning to step out from the realms of my imagination and have started to live and breathe in my thoughts, slowly evolving as the story progresses. I noticed one thing that as soon as you start typing your thoughts turn to words, words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and before you know it the story starts unfolding in front of you and you the writer becomes more of a mediator between your readers and the story. From there on it takes a completely different turn.

I also had a great time interacting with fellow Wrimo buddies who kept encouraging me to meet my goals. It was truly wonderful to interact with you all.

A bit of philosophy, a bit about my experience,and some tit bits and behind the scene is all that I hope to capture through these posts. I hope you enjoy reading them as much I enjoyed writing them. Cheers!

an excerpt from my first day’s work

Sunny Day, Blue Sky
You and I

Setting Sun, Golden Beach
You and I

Moonlit Night, Sparkling sky
You and I

Freezing Weather, Mountain Peak
You and I

Match Light, Dark Caves
You and I

Wonderful Place, Majestic Palace
You and I

Flowing River, High Waterfall
You and I

Singing Birds, Quiet Forest
You and I

Velvet Garden, Red Roses
You and I

Gushing winds, Open Field
You and I

Thundering Clouds, Rainy day
You and I

Dream World, Perfect Place
You and I

Heaven above, World below
You and I

My Heart, Your Heart
You and I