I Wish……..

I wish I had Hermione’s Time-Turner wherein I could keep turning it to get extra hours in a day. Extra hours in which I could read both books and blogs. My To Be Read pile is so high with books: both old and new, that it may bury me one day soon. And how many ever blogs I visit in a day, I know I have missed many blogs.

I wish I could clone myself so that each Rachna could work on one book. At this point of time my mind is swamped with 3 stories : a MG Mythological Fantasy with Indian Gods: Ganesha and Kartikeya. I have written around 15 chapters. Have gathered a 100 page research for it and my brain is working out the plotline.

The characters of a dark fantasy which I had abandoned a few years back at 21,000 words are jumping around in my mind, screaming for attention.

And from Monday another storyline: a love story has settled in my mind. Sigh. I badly need clones. If anyone has any idea how to create clones please let me know (Alex, If you are reading this (I know you are), please tell me how you manage to write those bestsellers of yours, create music and visit a zillion blogs and still have time to watch movies and keep yourself fit. I’m sure all of us will be eternally indebted to you.)

I wish I could come up with low calorie versions of my favourite food. All the foods I love are so high in calories: Brownies, Ice-creams, Chaat, Pakoras, Halwas, Pizzas, Cakes and Cookies.

I wish I could invent a machine which burns my calories while I am sleeping. That way I can sleep for an extra hour everyday instead of wearing out the soles of my shoes while jogging and walking early morning and picking up all kinds of allergies.

What do you all wish for yourselves?

My Writing Happiness

I am happiest when I am writing (a lot) and reading (a lot) and sending out submissions (though I do suffer from anxiety then, I am also thrilled to be sharing my work with agents and editors and getting closer to a publishing contract) and ofcourse blogging (by this I mean visiting all my close blog buddies and seeing what they have been upto behind my back).

Even if one of these elements is missing, then my writing happiness goes for a toss. And the actual writing suffers. I end up writing crappy scenes, which I eventually discard.

From last two weeks I have neither written a lot, nor read a lot, nor visited any blogs. But I have sent a few queries out. And completed the research for my Ganesha and Kartikeya book and written just a few chapters.

I plan to change all this now. I’m planning get back into my rhythm of writing, reading and blogging. Starting from today I’ll visit all my regular blog buddies (feeling bad that I have not been able to visit your blogs from the past few weeks), work on the Ganesha book and read a book every week.

What gives you all writing happiness? What disrupts your writing happiness?

IWSG Post - How do I Find the Time to Write?

It’s time for another IWSG post. IWSG aka Insecure Writers Support Group is a online group of writers, we post on the first Wednesday of every month. IWSG posts give us a chance to discuss all our writing related worries, anxieties, fears and insecurities. Other writers who share similar worries help us out with their advice and tips. Check out the IWSG website for amazing writing tips. To read the other IWSG posts, click here.

We must thank Ninja Captain Alex J Cavanaugh (author of the Amazon Bestsellers: CassaStar, CassaStorm, CassaFire and Dragon of the Stars) for starting this awesome group. With IWSG, Amazing and Adorable Alex has ensured that we writers have a buffer system to let off all our writing stress and worries. So, if you see writers trawling the cyberspace, with a spring in their steps, thank Alex for it.

The IWSG question of this month is ‘How do you find the time to write in your busy day?’

Frankly speaking there are days when I just don’t find the time to write, I need to pull that precious time out of my life. Till last year when I was teaching creative writing in college (though it was only part time), it would take me nearly one and a half hours to commute to and fro, add to that the teaching time, the time I would need to prepare for my classes and the time required to correct those assignments, more than half my day would slip away from me, leaving me no energy to do anything else. Added to this was all the free-lance feature writing and book reviews I did for the newspapers. To this I would also add my blogging. That left me with very little time to actually work on my books. I realized then that I was also compromising on my reading.

That’s when I realized I needed a break from college. And features writing (though I still do book reviews for the newspapers.) A separation from both these activities has freed up my time leaving me with more time to actually write my books. And read a few.

I have realized that we writers need to wage a war with so many activities to get a little time to write. I have also sacrificed TV for writing and reading. I just see half an hour of one show, Monday to Friday. That’s it. I have reduced many activities to find more time to write and research for my books.