Thursday, November 05, 2009

And miles to go before I'm done...

8000 words down; 42, 000 more to go. The characters are speaking to me already, whispering their secrets so only I can hear. They want to use me as a medium to tell their story and who am I to protest?


Stephen King's advice is that you write about what you know and you say it as it is - no window dressing. I realize everyday, as I write, that there is an awful lot I do not know. There are holes in the plot because of facts I do not know and reseach I do not have the time to do. And this despite the fact that my novel is set in the Mylapore of the 80's - the place and time that is in my blood. For instance, 'Murder in Mada Street' is centered around, well, Mada street, but looking at the map of Mylapore on google maps I realize that there is no Mada street. There is a N.Mada street and a S.Mada street but no Mada street. Really?

Going by King's dictum I've also given up the hope that I can ever write something that is not macabre. I have to be myself - no window dressing.

7 comments:

frissko said...

So you're giving nanowrimo a serious shot eh...cool...

And North and South Mada together make Mada...why're you confused?

Put the story on a password protected blog and let 'invited' readers read the work in progress no?...

ps: Spell check, sentence #2, *whispering...

Priya said...
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Priya said...
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Priya said...

Well, I expected North and South Mada to be at the top and bottom of Mada street but then I remember that we used to use 'Maada Veedhi' to refer to the whole area around the temple. Veedhi should be one singular road, don't you agree? Maybe it's the road that has the Bharathi Vidhya Bhavan building. I need to check with the current locals.

Illa da, right now it's not presentable. I'm having a lot of fun with this project, though. There are write-ins scheduled for several times a week (I can only attend the one scheduled for Sunday) where people get together and write for two hours. There are lots of advice thrown around and people discuss adverbs and passive voice like it's an epidemic. Good fun.

Unknown said...

peech, no idea what your story is about - but you have to weave into your plot about the restaurant where we used to hog in mada street, your friends place - and we used to slip away on the pretext of dance class or sani temple, to eat the amazing chats (and parata kurma) they used to serve. God, I am getting old, just cant recall the name of the restaurant (somehow canopy on alwarpet is the one picking my brain)

Priya said...

The name is Vadhana :-) The only reason I remember that name is because the missing 'n' in that name used to annoy me. Everyone has some ask from my story - R has asked that I don't kill anyone inside Kabali Kovil.

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