Thoughtspill

There are two Tumblr projects going on at the moment Project Wordstring and Project Vivid Vignettes although I find myself unable to dedicate time to them much. Wordstring is a flash fiction project and Vivid Vignettes is a project of vignettes of lush imagery. I'm starting another project Project Into The Wild which would be a Wattpad novella that can be extended into a novel. There are concepts of other novels but I start this project which is very generic so that I can play around with it and because unlike other concepts of novels it is not really formed in my mind and it will probably take shape as I write it as there is no skeleton as of now. I still remember that I used to collect inspirations from Tumblr for the first novel that I wanted to write, Ashtabhuj, on Tumblr, saving photos and pictures for locations and scenes. This project that I'm going to start on Wattpad is supernatural in nature and since it is generic I would be able to play around with my imagination and skills as a writer. I just hope that it doesn't get deleted as my other projects midway and if I'm successful in completing it then I would move on to my other ideas meanwhile I'll try to keep Project Wordstring and Project Vivid Vignettes alive as much as time allows. 

Thoughtspill

I have done it quite a few times but this time it seems like I have conviction but you never know. I had thought about writing my novels on Wattpad but everytime I write a few chapters and delete them as they fail to satisfy me. So, while I might not write my main novels as of yet on Wattpad, and it's just a guess I might end up doing that too, I think should write comics serialised into format of a novel. I have wanted to write comics ever since I stumbled upon that issue of Comic Jump in 2011 and actually since even long before that but that ambition got eaten up by my medical studies and hand to mouth survival. Writing comics needs two people in the very least, a writer and an illustrator if they are not one person and I don't know any art. What I do know however is creating storyboards in my head, comic panels in my head and that would inform my novel writing. I really hope to keep up this time despite the forces of the world trying to make me unoriginal. I don't watch any television except nature documentaries and any movies except comic book movies and sometimes occasional famous ones or sometimes any movie to bide my time so writing is only pleasure, recreation and entertainment at my disposal after the hustle of living the daily hand-to-mouth. I hope to write some stuff that I actually like to read and hope that readers also like it. Given the slop available and famous on Wattpad, and I'm not disparaging what sells, what sells is what sells and people need their escape hatch, I don't know how my writing would fare on platform but at least I would get the creative pleasure that I get from writing stories. 

Thoughtspill

One has to refine their voice if they are writing. In 2015, I was sure about what I wanted to achieve and I knew that I do not have the ability to achieve it as far as writing is concerned, truth is that I still don't. The vision for what I want to create is clear but that requires ability that is not mediocre. I can work on that and keep on working on that hoping that ultimately I reach that point where I execute my projects. My voice however is quite refined now, so much that I now feel that I'm saying what I want to say and exactly in the manner I want to say it but writing bigger works of fiction involves so many other things than voice. The adventure novel that I wanted to write first in 2011 had that adventure, thriller, mystical, mythical vibe but the politics of the country and the world changed and it sounds kind of stupid now and only hope is creating a world so immersive and atmospheric that it pulls the reader inside it kind of like Bram Stoker's Dracula or Harry Potter. Neil Gaiman too has an atmosphere but I have never liked his stories but I'm a fan of his craft, his ability as far as craft of writing is concerned and I love JK Rowling's storytelling. Stakes in storytelling both as a reader and writer increases as one matures. It's the same as playing with a toy gun and thinking nothing of it and handling a gun as an adult, as time passes the toy gun of stories transforms into a real gun and the ketchup that one squeezed over self as a child on being shot ends up becoming real blood as an adult. I have a bunch of stories in my head and there many that I can conjure on the go, but the main thing is atmosphere, I can't create a misty, cool metropolis in India and make readers believe it when the subways of the metropolitans of this country are filled with garbage and shit and it is here incorporating garbage and shit becomes necessary and then the metropolis becomes a misty, cool place filled with garbage and shit. There are other devices where I can take leaps of imagination and still make people believe it and those would be portals but they need stories that have dedicated mechanisms to sustain this plot device. Portals are by far one of my most favourite devices in fiction and they allow the reality to be as ugly as it already is while giving respite through fantasy of a parallel world. 

Thoughtspill

I think I have a bunch of stories and books in me even though I do not want to publish them. I find it funny that before I could write the kind of fiction that I wanted to write the reality of this nation collapsed. It seems that there are going to be no superheroes in this country and if there will be they'd be impotent. Myth-making for a country is the job of good men and women just how it was in the 90s and now that can't happen and I doubt it'd happen again or even if it does that it'd matter. In a totalitarian setting of production, consumption and exploitation myth-making doesn't stand a chance. Even old myths have collapsed so I don't think there is a chance and since I have seen the hideous and repulsive base reality of this country, it doesn't matter at least to me. I however will indulge myself in stories and myth-making just for the sake of personal pleasure and make it public. There was a time when I wanted to be a writer professionally but then the production and consumption equation became evident to me and I do not want to do anything with it. I read stories to get entertained and inspired and I write stories to entertain people and to educate them and bring awareness about the world. In the setting we live in today it doesn't matter. I, however, would go on with my plan and go ahead with writing stories in my head just for the sake of personal pleasure and I might end up creating a bunch of superheroes and superhero stories too just not in the comics format. 

Thoughtspill

It was 2015 and I was optimistic about Ashtabhuj. I was using Tumblr for inspiration and my goal was to immerse myself in the world of Ashtabhuj so much that other than work, academics and family I remain in that world. The redundancy of writing later expressed it to me but I persist because creating for the sake of creation is its own reward. There were many blocks but I worked on them. The world of Ashtabhuj still exist with one caveat and that makes that world redundant but then it makes all the worlds redundant including the world we live in. When I got into noir, it was about seeing the world in black and white and shades of grey. There was no colour. It is later I realised that colour exists only because the so called darkness allows it to exist. White and colour exist so that darkness can use it to its purpose. It was a sad realisation but truth in any form is beautiful and while I considered escapism as cowardice earlier, I realised that escapism after realisation of truth is the only sane option and choice. One has to be aware of truth and live in a world where they feel most comfortable. The past decade for me was spent in knowing the world and now after I know enough I can casually camp and stay in my comfort zone as once you know the truth and have familiarised yourself with discomfort there is no point in living in discomfort as I realised that it never ends. I plan to live with my creativity along with my job, academics and family. This, in the world of today, is the most sane choice. 

Thoughtspill

I have my writing projects planned for this year, but it is the execution that matters. It's a bunch of short stories, short story series and novellas and flash fiction projects. I sometimes write on Tumblr about my projects which works as brainstorming about my projects. Ashtabhuj is a distant dream still because I'm unable to decide the vibe for it but it is there in pipeline. I'll start with relatively simple novellas first and I would work on getting the hang of the atmosphere and vibe that I want to create. My idea for Ashtabhuj is exactly the vibe I had for it in 2011 and the issue now is that I have way more gravity and maturity to me than what I had then and creating that vibe would solely depend on how good I'm at the craft. There is Agnipunkh, which is, what I call, a mythonoir, a noir espionage story with a mythological background. These are two serious novels. There is a novella called Into The Wild, on an adventure horror theme and then there is a novella, kind of surrealistic magic realism political thriller titled the Claw Machine. There are two short story series, one, a psychiatric thriller which has not yet been named and another titled Paranormal Diaries of The Indies which, as the name suggests, deals with Paranormal and horror themes and it shares its universe with Into The Wild. There are a couple of short story ideas too of one which has its skeleton fully formed. I would be taking help of storyboarding to work on these projects and I quite hopeful about them. If I manage to achieve even half or even one-third of what has been planned for this year, I'd be quite happy.

Thoughtspill

Writing blocks are terrible and I was desperately searching for methods, and one of the methods I stumbled upon after prolonged deliberation is storyboarding. It's easy to write a story or novella when you have a story board. Since I am a fan of comics and graphic novels it's easy for me to imagine my story or scenes of novels as a storyboard and this part enters into the domain of crafting stories when a writer doesn't have the flow. I think storyboarding is a great method. A lot of writing in my earlier years depended on the flow, I wrote the first word and experienced the trance of flow, which as one gets older and other distractions start to occupy the mind becomes difficult to achieve. There is one more advantage of storyboarding, it prevents the ugliness from the world seeping into the story. You think about scenes, settings and characters and you storyboard them and the Delhi in the storyboard is different from the actual Delhi with garbage and shit-infested subways, even if you reproduce it its character changes in the storyboard and you can carry it over to the story retaining all the facts and fortifying it with vibes of your choice. 

Writing Update

I think I have enough writing projects for now. Two projects on Tumblr for flash fiction and imagery and four novellas on Wattpad, one novel, two story series if I choose to write them and my regular blogging on my blog. Among the story series is one unnamed project the name of which hasn’t been decided but it’s a medical or, to be accurate, psychiatric thriller which in some stories might also touch up on occult and second is Paranormal Diaries of The Indies, a short story series in the horror genre. One of the novellas, Into The Woods, is set in the same universe as Paranormal Diaries of The Indies. Another novella is Naraka Dwar, a science fiction, cosmic horror story the concept of which started as an episodic story by the name Hellseeker. The third and fourth one is Agnipunkh, a mythonoir thriller, and the one I’m writing at present is The Claw Machine, a magical realism sociopolitical thriller. I think I must start rewriting the draft of my novel, Ashtabhuj, on Wattpad itself and that would make the total projects to nine in number There are more than enough projects to last a year and I hope to complete them.

Thoughtspill

Writing on Tumblr is not easy for me anymore. There was a time when it was. I was youthful and experimented once, I wrote like Kafka, or at least tried to, I posed as a lone wolf, wrote poetry with romantic longing and did all kinds of stupid shit until youth faded and I realised the true nature, the financial nature, of the world. There is nothing that can be done about it but we can stand by our business, which, for me, is writing. Tumblr was a sanctuary once, and it is still kind of, though it doesn’t have the same vibe that it had during the late 2000s and early 2010s. Tumblr had a depth once, but then lack of depth is a general problem these days and not just of Tumblr. I have few blogs and still I keep finding myself coming back to record my evolution as a writer and do my projects which I post on Tumblr.

I’m doing a bunch of projects at present, one project is a flash fiction project on this website and another is an imagery project, again, here. So Tumblr is handling two of my projects aiming at improving myself as a writer and at the same time creating something, if not novel, at least readable. I have done a bunch of projects on this website earlier and they were mostly supposed to be flash fiction projects and I don’t know how successful I was in it, but I discontinued them when it seemed to me that they had reached their end. I think it would be three or four projects, including one poetry project that I have done and completed (read: discontinued) here and at present there are two ongoing writing projects and I hope to achieve my goals for starting them. Tumblr is supposed to be my expression as a writer, and although it is not as successful in being so in the present but, in the past it was in expressing the artistic, angsty me, I hope to express the writer, or the writer persona, in me better in the future.

Hoodie Warming

It was snowing. They were together in the blanket. The snow covering the trees was visible from the glass windows. It’s been so long since they’ve been together and today was the day, society can go to hell, it’s a mutual conclusion. She keeps her head on his chest slowly breathing making the fabric on his hoodie warm. Have they come here together just for cuddling? no one knows that, even they don’t know. But it feels good, after ten long years when they had chosen each other instinctively. The unconscious can identify soulmates in a snap they say and it happened to both of them and back then there was no time for courting, neither time nor the privilege so they decided to fuck, hard and dirty. It’s been ten years since that chance meeting after which their paths diverged. True love still has to live under the balls of society. Genuine self-expression is a no no in this world of whoring out yourself for performance. He runs his fingers on her hair. Luscious hair. It’s still snowing and they are comfortable. He runs his finger on her lips. She is a few years older than him, but he likes to play daddy and she is kind enough to let him play. Time passes slowly but fast for them as fast as when you are writing an exam where you know all the answers. No hard fucking, no dirty tricks. It’s all they want. It’s a shame that cleanliness has to hide in fear of filth. The purity of something is now just a brand name and does not indicate the true nature of the product.

Fission

“It’s sweet, when you experience the real reality instead of hallucinating the simulation. Though after experiencing the real reality you still are going to hallucinate the simulation but in quite a real way. You will see the hellscape that is wrapped in the simulation.” Professor Rajan wrote this on his social media page. Life was getting tough but he has prepared for it. Doors closing was new to him, in fact he finds it funny that the doors he didn’t even want to enter were closing, and with a bang to attract his attention. “It’s funny,” he thought. He imagines himself as a videogame character on a map now, just that he keeps aware at all times. Everybody lies, he had heard it on some TV show when he was young, the truth however is that everything is a lie. Lies become facts, and facts become truth. How can that happen? There is no explaining this to a lesser mortal. Nobody can really explain this shit, except him now of course. He gets an idea and he starts typing again “People’s truths differ, and the facts even though they are the same can be manufactured. How? Well for a guy or girl who was adopted in a family and grew up in it being loved and never knew the truth, or even if he did, his true family is the one that adopted him or her, but the fact is that his biological family is different. This is the difference between truth and fact. Here is how facts are created now, a guy manipulated and angered enough to commit a murder and he does that, the fact is that he is a murderer. The truth is that the actual murderer is the person who instigated and manipulated him.” Professor Rajan clicks the button and the post goes live on his social media page. He had been framed in a case of selling nuclear secrets to an enemy state. He had been in hiding and he had been working on a personal project, a nuclear device of his own. This was the city in which most of the individuals who framed him lived. He opens the briefcase. “Enough to blow up the city,” he thinks. He closes his eyes and prays for the innocents, “they aren’t going to have good lives anyway under these bastards,” a tear rolls down his cheek. He presses the red button. Little Sonu playing in a public park at the periphery of the city sees a mushroom cloud rising.

Circle of 8

How does an innocent find himself in the eighth circle of hell? He realised that it’s mostly the innocents who go to hell. He looks at the elevator that got him here. Funny thing he thought and reached in his pocket, to find his pack of cigarettes and the lighter. Would I get cigarettes in hell? No chance, he thought. He looked around, all kinds of depravities and tortures being inflicted on innocents by demons. He puts a cigarette in his mouth and lights it. He was suffering but not more than people who were more innocent than him. It was hot in here which was funny because the deepest circle that is the ninth circle of hell was freezing cold. He kept smoking his cigarette. There were still a few cigarettes left in the pack, but guess finding a cigarette shop in the eighth circle of hell was a task, especially when his wallet was confiscated by the demons at the entry gate. Though he was relieved that it’s only innocents who get tortured in hell because it gets him community and proves what he had suspected all his life. He looked around and found a rock and took a seat on it. He was about to get tortured but he didn’t give a fuck, what he gave a fuck about was finding a cigarette shop in the hell, he could trade his jacket to get a couple of packets. He looked around, women getting raped, children getting molested, men getting tortured. Well seems like hell alright, he thought to himself. When hell is for the innocent, what kind of God is God? He thought. But then he remembered he is the same guy who made an angel prostrate to a creature inferior to him and then banished him from heaven so that the banished angel could become unfathomably evil and a pimp of hell to send more innocents to get tortured. Checks out, he thinks to himself. He prayed to God and thanked. He looked up and saw a demon approaching him with a whip. Looking at him he asked, do you happen to know a cigarette shop around here?

Project Wordstring

I’m starting a new flash fiction project to help me overcome a specific writing block. Of course it needs feedback but most of all with this project I’m trying to see something about creativity at a personal level. If what I’m set out to know and achieve gets achieved it is going to help me immensely in my next projects. It’s a complex project and deals with the mathematics and engineering aspect of the craft of writing, no not the actual mathematics and engineering, it has nothing to do with that, but about mathematics and engineering of words that form a writing that is utilising the technical aspects of writing to produce desired writing or produce desired effects on the reader. This is not a short project and I presume it is going to be considerably longer than my other flash fiction projects. While technicalities are not going to be visible to the reader and it would read like and would appear just like other writings, at a deeper level I would be dealing with the complex technicalities of language, grammar and voice and the craft of writing.

Thoughspill

Who decides if you are an artist or writer or not? I want to write, I want to build worlds. I hate the tag of a writer, but I want to write amazing stuff, the kind of stuff that I wanted to read but doesn’t exist. Writing is a hobby and it can never be a profession for me especially after really understanding what profession really means, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not serious about it. I take all Nanowrimos seriously but I don’t write. If you want to create, you must create. Nanowrimos don’t work in my country, it’s not a thing here, if I do a Nanowrimo it’s a betrayal because of the word national. I could do with a Nowrimo or a Wonowrimo. My goals have been clear for quite some time. Churn out stuff that I enjoy reading, what is lacking is my ability, not the inherent, just the present ability. I enjoy writing and I hope to probably reach the place where I am able to put my creativity on paper.

Dr. Dolittle

The realisation that discrimination, oppression and misogyny will never end because they are centrally propagated is liberating. It allows you to care less for the social bullshit and focus on your personal lives. India has allowed me to see the basic truths, which are not my personal truths, but actual truths of the country, and probably the world. And they are power, money resources and sex. Anything political is just permutations and combinations of this, in India and probably the world. Finer sensibilities do not matter anymore and if they do, only because they are allowed to, which for a person like me is as good as non-existent. The realisation was humbling for a guy with big ideals but sooner or later people would come to know about it and we would see social media dying, when society doesn’t exist what good is social media. Though ultimately social media is going to be used as a cry for help against individual oppression which it already is but later it would be an aware cry. It’s hilarious that the actual truth is this cheap but then it was my fault to think highly of humanity when all throughout my life I have had experiences. School education and media played a big part in deluding me but then one ultimately realises that the truth is what you see around you. The future of movies is bleak, which is a shame because I still remember warm movies like Dr. Dolittle, Harry Potter and Rush Hour. What a shame, but there isn’t a thing that can be done about it.

Observer

There are levels to things. You understand the setup of the shitshow and you realise that some vibrations and frequencies have been blocked for you. It’s not a new thing, it’s been more than two decades since it has been happening and you have felt it happening in real-time. It’s kind of a hell that you are living in, but then you have to own this corner of hell. All of it has been terribly needless but then you realise that these motherfuckers specialise in needless. The good thing is that you now understand the game. How is it when some individuals have the first person as well as bird eye view of your person and life and especially if they are unbelievably evil. I have seen what real evil is in the past decade, but I realise that it has been in my life way longer in that. It makes me realise that it is actually evil that controls the lives of people on this planet behind the smokescreen of God. Thoughts and experiences become beliefs and so this evil that pervades the lives of people alters people’s thoughts and experiences to make them commit evil or a lot of times does evil directly through them and then exploits them for it as there are clear definitions of what is good and bad and of morality. The past decade has been fun for me as I have been able to see my region and country in its naked glory and also the demonic exploitation and rape going on behind the facade of peace.

Molon

The internal timeline felt fragmented once. The truth is, it isn’t. It felt like it had been sliced into fragments per smallest unit of time and those fragments started floating into the oblivion, but the actual timeline resides deeper than that and even if in the worst case, it is fragmented, it can be made whole, as it is not some material thing, it is alchemy. The amount of effort that can be made on a kid is tremendous and that is true a huge lot of kids, but then this is life, I guess, what other excuse can there be. A method to convince yourself that the timeline is intact, you must picture yourself in third person and imagine what though you might have at that moment, and whether that thought is originating from within you, or has an external origin. That’s a new thing I came to know, thoughts can have external origin and when that happens all bets are off. Though if you are like me you’d still try to mind your business and try not to escalate the situation, but then escalation or not depends totally on the other party. The other party has wanted escalation since the start, and when that happens there is nothing that can be done about it. Timeline being intact is a beautiful thing, and even if it isn’t, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is to enjoy your life. It’s idiots all the way and you have to try to avoid them. Well, if they don’t let you avoid them, then it’s come and get it.

Rooster Gold

You feel an inertia within yourself, as if something inside you opposes you when you try to do what you actually want to do. There were delusory times when you felt that it was your own self. You wrote a lot about your own self trying to destroy you, humiliate you, but then in the end truth comes to the fore. That inertia within you was not your own, but politics, and most probably from the town or region you hail from, and this politics prevents you from accessing your own true self, making friends and connections from other people and isolating you. The best part, you don’t even have to do anything wrong, this politics is based on hate and this hate is majority of times unsubstantiated, and when the power dynamic is so absolute that your mind and body can be controlled, people get murdered just on the baseless whims of those who have the upper hand in the power dynamic. This is the providence that controls the lives of the people and when you look outside, the beggars, the homeless, the drug addicts, the drunkard all of their lives ruined for no reason at all, and the reason given for this would be, they did it to themselves, or that they might have done something in the past life. They can’t be helped and helping them has consequences. Those who pay, will survive, as simple as that. The truth is that this shit is real-time, and while long term planning is a thing, your life can have effects of real-time and long term planning both. How and why is this possible? The most probable reason for the “how” is technology, and the exact reason for the “why” is politics. The best part of it all is that protest, as well as resistance, is useless, whatever this shit is, it would unfold the way it has to, it’s a foolproof system and since it is real-time, it may happen that innocents die in order to make this shit happen the way it has to. It’s a game of probability where the fate of people is sealed, and they have as much chance as a rooster in a poultry farm, the hens however would survive as long as they keep laying eggs.

Writing Update

It used to be beautiful. Imagining winter evenings just after the rain, when you walk with your love under the street lights and go to an icecream cart and buy icecreams. These pink winters still exist for some. For people like me, they are fake but I acknowledge that for some they may be real.  If pink winters are pink only because they are allowed the need for pink winters ends for a person like me. Did I experience pink winters?  Yes I did, but I also have seen the world in black and white, and I prefer the truth of black and white over fake pink winters. Black and white don't discriminate, pink winters however need a pass. Isn't it funny millions of individuals being criminally insane and shitting on the pink winters of harmless people. As far as the existence of pink winters goes, they exist and they have the ability to exist, but the very fact that they need passes in today's world to makes them as good as non-existent for people like me. Fun part pink winters were not even my priority, and still the game was stretched for decades. Isn't it funny, criminals staying deprived even after swallowing whole lives and innocence of people. You can have your garden and it will be burned by arsonists, but the truth is that it will never get burned, if you could make it once it would remain forever, if only you were able to make it. This kind of sabotage and arson doesn't need effort and when you realise this you start to develop respect for actual saboteurs and arsonists, because at least they take the risk of actually being held accountable. You find that these are worms that feed on pink winters of people. You can walk hand in hand with your beloved after the rains on a winter evening but it isn't real anymore, probably never was. 

Pink Winters

It used to be beautiful. Imagining winter evenings just after the rain, when you walk with your love under the street lights and go to an icecream cart and buy icecreams. These pink winters still exist for some. For people like me, they are fake but I acknowledge that for some they may be real.  If pink winters are pink only because they are allowed the need for pink winters ends for a person like me. Did I experience pink winters?  Yes I did, but I also have seen the world in black and white, and I prefer the truth of black and white over fake pink winters. Black and white don't discriminate, pink winters however need a pass. Isn't it funny millions of individuals being criminally insane and shitting on the pink winters of harmless people. As far as the existence of pink winters goes, they exist and they have the ability to exist, but the very fact that they need passes in today's world to makes them as good as non-existent for people like me. Fun part pink winters were not even my priority, and still the game was stretched for decades. Isn't it funny, criminals staying deprived even after swallowing whole lives and innocence of people. You can have your garden and it will be burned by arsonists, but the truth is that it will never get burned, if you could make it once it would remain forever, if only you were able to make it. This kind of sabotage and arson doesn't need effort and when you realise this you start to develop respect for actual saboteurs and arsonists, because at least they take the risk of actually being held accountable. You find that these are worms that feed on pink winters of people. You can walk hand in hand with your beloved after the rains on a winter evening but it isn't real anymore, probably never was.