Tag: Return to Earth

  • Links to my recent Writing

    On the cusp of November, I began writing again. The last time I wrote before this was for the SSLV launch in August. I did not write on the Bullet Journal instance either.

    This blog post is to link to the various pieces of writing I have done at the cusp of November:

    The Wire Science – When an LVM3 flies, what does it mean for India?

    I wrote this piece for The Wire Science. It was published on October 30, 2022. In the article, I argue that while the LVM3 has proven reliability, it needs to sort out production issues and needs more support from the government.

    Short Story – Return to Earth

    I started writing this story in 2018 for National Novel Writing Month. It started as a pentalogy. I hoped to publish one novel as a part of each NaNoWriMo in the future. I then decided to cut it down to a trilogy. In 2021, I decided to cut it down further to a single novel. This story has haunted me and the only way I could think of something else for NaNoWriMo 2022 was to limit it to a short story.

    Short Story – My Life is a Diwali Gift

    I wrote this story in response to a prompt. I wrote a follow-up to this story that I will publish on November 10.

    Newsletter #42

    I sent out the 42nd edition of the newsletter on November 3.

  • Back to Return to Earth

    I wrote the last Chapter of Return to Earth on November 30, 2021. Return to Earth is a re-worked version of a novel that I was attempting to write for NaNoWriMo 2021.

    Through December, 2021, I was busy with delivering work related projects before the end of the calendar year.

    In January 2022, I was following up with a distraction. A short story idea that I had hoped to write and publish by end of January 2022. The short story consumed me. I was not able to think of returning to the novel. It took a bout of COVID-19 for me to drop the idea of pursuing the short story and return to the novel.

    Another thing pushing the return to the novel, Return to Earth, was the kick-off of Cohort 2 of Long-form Writing which I had the honor of co-hosting with Hemant and Saurabh.

    I returned to writing the novel, Return to Earth, again yesterday (on February 8, 2021). This is a short but important chapter in the novel.

  • Writing a Novel

    November is celebrated as National Novel Writing Month in America. It’s called NaNoWriMo for short. Although it began as a US phenomenon, it has turned into a global movement. There is growing global participation each year of authors writing every day in the month of November. They hope to write about 50,000 words in the month of November. Consistent daily writing with global accountability.

    My tryst with NaNoWriMo began in 2012. I do not have any public record of this. I had emailed a bunch of people in 2012 asking if they would be my beta readers. There is no record of this novel on my private storage or on Google Drive. I seem to also not have informed these people about the status of this novel.

    In 2018, I started writing chapters of a science fiction novel. I had called it One in Malayalam – Onu. I had published the chapters on Medium. Although I call them Chapters, the number of words in each was very low. I don’t think the whole thing together would qualify as a short story. I was also not sure where the story was going after Chapter 8. Hence, I abandoned that effort.

    In 2019, I took to a physical notebook and started writing a nation-state fiction. The first book in the series was called William Horsborg – Life and Times. I wrote about 1200 words before I gave up on that. I will take this up again. It is a story I used to tell myself as I drew maps in a notebook as a 11 year old child. I have the stories in my head and they will not leave me in peace until I have told them.

    I gave 2020 a hard pass and did not attempt NaNoWriMo.

    In 2021, I had mixed feelings about writing a novel. I see-sawed between wanting to write and not wanting to write. An opportunity to write for about an hour a day opened up for me yesterday. I took the time to read the story I had written in 2018.

    Although, I started writing it in the month of November, I am not counting it as an entry for NaNoWriMo 2021. But, I would like to acknowledge the part that NaNoWriMo played in remembering about writing the novel.

    I am calling the novel, Return to Earth, tentatively. It is not a final title and it may change. Once each chapter is over, I will share it here and on my About page. I finished writing about 1000 words of the first chapter today morning.