Sid-O-Scope

Entering the self-publishing versus traditional Publishing debate rather late but nonetheless, here I am. What would you rather do, would you self-publish or would you rather wait for traditional? Can you publish poems? Short stories? Novels and so on. Who will read my book? And many more questions. Let's begin by addressing the big elephant in the room- So you have completed a manuscript, now what? Take a deep breath and spend a moment in reflection. Congratulations, you have done what majority of writers don't do- write. Kudos to you on completing one step in this whole journey that is going to consume the next six to seven months (sometimes more) of your life. The next best guess is that you want to get it published, you want to see it in the hands of readers and you want to get praised for your effort. You know it is easy, obviously, look at Chetan Bhagat, he sells so crappy books. Stop thinking about this. In the next few paragraph, I am going to enlist the many...

If you know me in my other life, I proudly boast of myself as the Monk Who Sold His Computer for the Cloud. I do not own a computer, apart from video editing, and invest a lot of time trying to replace my computer with cloud services . One of the most important problem faced by me in this period was how do I move novel writing services to the cloud? Can an internet based service be used for Novel writing? The service should be such that it can be used to sync on the phone, iPad as well as Web. With NaNoWriMo around, I decided to put on the thinking cap and setup my workspace in Evernote. If you are new to this world, Evernote is a note-taking tool that helps capture text-based-notes, picture based notes, Web-Links (Clips) and even voice based notes. So let's get to work.  Evernote lets you create Notebooks that can store your notes together. The notebooks can further be grouped together in something they call ' Stack'. For the purpose of the blog, I am going...

The past year was something of a golden period for writing for me. For those who came in late (or not following me on  Facebook page ), I had a big writing year.  I finished the most epic science fiction book this year titled Ragnarok . The book will be released this August or September. A graphic novel titled  Agatya is set to release immediately after that. Agatya is a book about the last line of defence between Heaven and Hell. That's two fictional releases back to back. There is one more technical book coming out soon (no release planned). And finally a short film based on a Short Story from this blog. (Read  Original Ginger Chai  if you are in that sort of thing) I am writing a lot in the past year and that was a shameless marketing plug for my  Facebook page . With all these books and releases I had a big writing year behind me since last May. I was writing and editing most of the time. And as with any norma...

For those who are aware (and many of those who are not, don't fret awareness is just temporary) I am currently busy building a multiverse. A lot of questions were asked around my multiverse and I had to answer them at one point or the other. So here is a compilation of my thoughts (and a little bit of progress) around my multiverse. It might be a tiny bit of long post BUT towards the end I am leaving you with a bonus sneak peak of my Universe, don't miss it. If you do not know what a Multiverse is, Multiverse is basically a shared Universe where multiple characters live (not in harmony) and jump in and out of stories. For e.g., Incident happening in some story are refereed in another story sometimes via close related person or maybe through public medium. Designing a multiverse is a herculean task in itself for little little things matter in this universe. Like Harry Potter lives in his own Universe. It has its own Laws. The Central Theme of the Multiverse My mu...

"Hi, I am very new to this can you tell me how to start my blog?" "I want to write a novel, do you know anyone who can publish it?""I have an idea, can you connect me with a publisher" and the list goes on. The amount of queries about first time writing increases even faster than the 'friend' request my recruiters on Linkedin. Write My advice to all the one who want to start a blog, write a book or take a career in full time writing- write. write and write. There is nothing else you can do other than do this over and over again. Write. You will start with bad English, you will start with stupid things but eventually you grow, eventually you discover the inner writer and that's when your writing takes place. Read Obviously you can't just write, as a writer you have to read a lot too. I personally don't read any specific genre but there are people who like certain genre. First step of being a good writer is being a good read...

1. Have I read anything you've written?  Lets start with the obvious, unless you have good taste in literature I would probably say no. But then if you have you not read anything at all, I don't think you have. Stop wasting my time and pick up my book.  2. How much money do you make?  That's plain rude. It is one thing to ask a CEO how much money he makes and completely different for a writer. Remember writing is a job like others. 3. Where do you get your ideas?  I have a magical crystal ball that churns out ideas every-time I want. See this is kind of stupidity is why we writers write. There is no extra organs in my body that churn out ideas nor do I have a shrine dedicated to getting ideas. So where do I get my ideas from? I take that as a compliment, stop staring. 4. Will you write my great story idea or  If you help me write my life story, I'll split the income with you after we sell the book?  Unless you are Shahrukh Khan, the chances ...

Cross posting from my other blog Halleluah!!!! Three years of writing effort, 80,000 words. First edit, 79,000 words (Doesn't seem a lot but trust me it is) Second edit, 67,000 words (Phew and getting rid of one of a nice piece which had dinosour in it. **Sulk**) And finally typing the two words that would perhaps make sense of it all. -- The End -- But then if only things were as simple in that crazy brain of mine, no they were not. So here is what I ended writing THE WORLD WAS NORMAL OR AS NORMAL AS IT POSSIBLY COULD BE. THIS WOULD BE THE TIME TO QUOTE A ‘THE END’ ON A BOOK BUT THEN IS IT? FOR WE KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT DON’T WE?   TIME, AS THEY SAY, IS A FUNNY THING. IT WANTS US TO BELIEVE IT MOVES FORWARD BUT SNEAKILY MOVES IN ALL DIRECTIONS.   F INALLY, IT WAS NEVER ABOUT THE ENDING, IT WAS ALWAYS ABOUT THE JOURNEY. Is the end, perhaps not. But a three year effort is laudable. During these three years I.. Got married Moved city twice Went into ...