how to write a book

Yes! we all get bitten by the writers bug sometime and a majority of successful writers today are from this coterie of sudden writers rush . The beginning of any project will decide its ultimate fate - success or an unfinished hash . It will also decide the writers future , so with the stakes high do not gamble ...

Make a writers notebook since this is the most precious resource to help you . This notebook shall come handy in jotting down your first steps towards writing. Decide what interests you , find out from the numerous medias available about current topics - if its football season - maybe you could weave a story around it or have some situations connected to it ! or if there is a lot of moralistic story doing the rounds in the news you may try to have a similar character in your plot.

Take all ideas you have regarding what a book should be - recall all those trashes which you threw down never to complete again . What was the deciding factor which made you turn away from reading those ??

Once the subject is decided - there are so many research options for details to be incorporated in your story. If you are an adventure writer ensure that the car chases or mountain climbing chapters contain plausible events, since the modern reader is very aware and may not take kindly to any improbable situations.

A Sci-Fi writer can however give wings to thoughts and words as anythings possible in science - progresses made by real life scientists definitely point to that ! The stories of yesteryear's are reality today.

Planning on writing a romance ?

Almost all books, movies and stories revolve around individuals , who are in situations where their search for a soul mate leads them through various experiences and travails which mostly end in a 'all is well ' and ' they lived happily ever after endings '. These situations depend on the script , so they could be funny, sad, social or moralistic . The story could have just two characters , it can be a love triangle -or the more the merrier - perhaps a multi character plot.

Once the writer decides on the number of persons involved in the story, the next step is to imagine interesting situations wherein these characters can interact. The meeting places and responses can be taken from real life experiences (with the names changed of course ). Care should be taken to write in a manner which makes the reader relate to the characters, situations and culminations.

Every romance has its agonies, joys, fights and misunderstandings , so its up to you - the 'god' of your characters to weave a plot that has all this and more to keep your readers glued on , begging for more !

These are the very basic steps to begin writing . Hope you have found them helpful and start on your project . Happy Writing!!

RAGGING IN SCHOOLS

This community http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Community?cmm=98477238 is for concerned parents and persons who are aware of the mental pressures that are created due to undue teasing, abusive and threatening behaviours by co-students. it is definitely not only freshers who are ragged, the definition of ragging in the Indian law does not specify this. there are innumerable cases where students of the same class group together to tease another in a sadistic and malicious manner thereby leading to a helpless and isolated situation for the individual who is being hounded. my appeal is for all parents and students to come out and speak against any person who due to some reason or the other continues to indulge in disruptive behaviour which can lead to a permanent psychological scarring in an innocent person. so join hands so we can form a strong social organisation and help through a strong platform for all the affected persons , who till now were suffering alone and had no clue as to whom to confide in and how to raise a voice against such malicious behaviour existing

There are instances where we find our child depressed and helpless , we ourselves have no clue about how to solve this situation where seemingly childish pranks are played on our child. BEWARE THIS COULD BE SERIOUS . the warning signals are refusal to attend school, unexplained illnesses, changed behaviour, weepy eyes and hints on futility of life. if the teasing , disruptive and abusive behaviour continue contact school authorities , if they fail to take action take the resort of law , do what you must to save your child from trauma. DO NOT leave the situation hoping that it may eventually solve itself or that your child is old enough to handle it. give full support to your child no matter what age group let him/her have confidence that you are with them no matter how small or insignificant the issue is.DOING THIS CAN SAVE YOUR CHILD. GO OVER RECORDS OF UNEXPLAINED SUICIDES BY YOUNG PERSONS AND PERHAPS YOU'LL REALISE WHAT I M TALKING ABOUT.

For the Future

All life on earth revolves in the vicious circle of multiplying, using and then degenerating . This can be seen in all plants, animals and humans . They all follow a life cycle and then dissipate . Throughout this tenure you see the plants and the animals give back a considerable portion of resources to mother earth. It is us human beings who tend to take and forget about returning to the rightful owner, be it a book or the immense resources that we borrow from our planet.

There are a few scattered voices reminding us of our duties which tend to rise and fall in our sensibilities, often like a disturbing background cacophony . And then there are the movies like 2012 / avatar , which are given rave reviews - are viewed by all and sundry who tend to ignore the underlying message of impending doom if we fail to take the necessary steps immediately.

The need of the hour is to begin taking care of our limited resources now ! Stop to think for a while before junking and misusing / overkilling the luxurious products which are deemed necessities now . The current era of consumerism will soon lead to the consumers being consumed themselves . The world has indeed become a more comfortable place to live but has it also changed for the better ? In our unending quests for more comfort there have been innumerable sacrifices made on account of 'development '. The effect of all this has started showing on our surroundings , our environment .Climatic changes , water scarcities, new diseases these are but a few rewards for a 'developed society'.

Its high time that all of us wake up to the eminent disasters , that can come calling , to destroy our earth . Some very simple and oft repeated steps can help us redeem the damage -

We need more green cover, less carbon emitting monsters , walk more - drive less , shun plastic, use paper sparingly, recycle, eat less meat and above all educate our young ones so that they know what is to be done for a future . The last step is the most important as we have heard the other steps so often that now it is just a repetitive boring exercise , meaningless to us but remember - its not for us that we need to do this , our lives have been and will be served well enough but WHAT OF THE FUTURE ???

crisis management

Saturday mornings are hectic.A plethora of jobs tend to crop up & amidst getting sleepy reluctant kids ready for morning school and preparing to appease the Shani devata*, a mad rush ensues.

One such Saturday morning lead to an additional lesson learnt unknowingly. After managing to drop the kids to school on time we were speeding away to buy the puja **items , when at an unmanned traffic crossing we were forced to stop for a bunch of school children crossing over. A couple of them were undecided on our next action, they gauged that we may be tempted to disregard their safety and continue our flight instead of providing them a safe passage. Their reactions to this were very different - one was holding out a pacifying hand, signalling us to allow them to cross while the other, a short tempered one decided to bad mouth us and give us a few quelling looks .

So ... whats the lesson ....

inculcate good manners in kids ?

better traffic sense ?

better time management by us ? .......

None of the above !

This situation made me reflect on crisis management .

The way an ordinary person may react at work or anywhere to an impending crisis. The more settled and mature person will respond to a tense and threatening situation very calmly, in a well thought out manner. The response to any problem will be planned and moulded to give a certain direction to the crisis and its perpetrators.

Conversely, an immature individual will resort to an unplanned, aggressive uncalled for tirade against the situation as well as the person whom he thinks is the perpetrator.

And what of the perpetrators ? Our reaction , as the ones who had brought on the crisis at hand was to follow the mature child's gestures - to stop and wait for them to cross over , whereas the other aggressive child had a close miss from our resultant reaction - to teach him a manner or two with appropriate chastisement.

The lesson hence learnt by us was how to react against any perceived or impending catastrophe - if we deal with life's problems in a calm and well thought out manner ,to channelise proper resources appropriately, anything can be solved , and if the reactions are immature , it leads to further complications thus disrupting our life.

* a Hindu deity

** prayer

keeping the faith

hey everybody, guess i m a late starter, maybe bloggings over and twitterings begun but let me stick to my good olde blog and share a few thoughts with you !

on going thru current affairs - the hottest one turned out to be the ' Tiger woods story ' or is it the 'Tiger Series' ????

A lot has been said and written about it maybe this is not about him or his wife, its about the breach of trust and the subsequent pain / pressures felt by the parties involved. Life situations where a lesson can be learnt to follow a code of conduct.

Faith and trust as i see them are - faith is a situation where an individual is blindly given charge of a life/and trust is having faith that the individual to whom we are handing over our past ,present and future shall take full care of it.

Its therefore boils down to this that faith and trust are two sides of the same coin. They are reposed in every life situation be it a commercial or a personal one . Now what happens when a person is blindly trusted ? mostly a very human trait is to fail the total trust at some time during the sojourn of life. when this occurs the lives of both the trustee and the trusted are shattered.

the ensuing period which follows this breach of trust is absolutely indescribable. the trespassed person fails to come out of this negative experience unscathed and continues to question the trespass and the trespasser. there are no satisfactory answers to these questions as the mind is unable to trust or have faith again. its just a lose lose situation!

how then can faith be restored ? it can be done if the trespasser is truly repentant and willing to go through the most gruelling fire tests for a prolonged period. the aggrieved party will try to test and retest the newly struck bond and will be prepared to take flight if a slightest tug is felt in the relationship.

the entire onus of keeping the relationship alive hence falls onto the shoulders of a person who did not come up to the mark earlier !!! they will need to be very open sincere, always willing to be torn apart, examined and cross examined as well as patiently loving. then only can this relationship survive and only then can it take strength to eventually reach a higher level of faith and trust - never to be violated again.