Many years ago, I tried to write a novel. It was ambitious of me, driven by the belief that “I can also do it” after reading Chetan Bhagat, yet without a good understanding of the effort it takes. I tried to weave a story, combining and building on a few bits and pieces of what I had written on my blog. Those pieces involved a fictional character called LaajVanti, and were casual, funny and relatable for readers with my kind of profile at the time. I tried to write the novel like we do a course assignment or corporate proposals - put together some nice content and write stuff connecting them all - stitch them together, ensure a flow, cook up a storyline and conclude like it conveys beauty.
In corporates we often start with a strawman when there is a boss to review, time to spare, and the broad structure is unambiguous. Writing fiction, however, is a creative process and cannot be forced to follow a set structure. It involves imagination that can suck you into itself, such that you coexist in various contexts with your characters - either being one of them or watching them, standing next to them. It consumes you so much that you literally live in many imaginary worlds for extended period of time, and this physical world just becomes a pathway to those. These other lives in other worlds bring strong emotions - curiosity, intrigue, anger, excitement, joy, melancholy, hope - in forms and depths you rarely experience in real life. Getting there, however, is not so spontaneous. It requires commitment, persistence and internal push to cross some boundaries. Until you cross those boundaries, it’s a struggle, a hustle, some trial-and-error, and mostly shooting in the dark to see sparks and patterns. It requires patience. Lots of patience. You let your mind wander. You let it dream. You’d often wake up without finishing a dream, especially when it was taking an interesting turn. You’d feel disappointed at the broken sleep and try to push yourself back into it, just so you could get to a conclusion in the dream. Sometimes when your sleep is shallow, you mix dreams with your own cooked up details (hallucinations?). And then, you can only sleep so much at a time - a limitation that frustrates you. And not all of it is about your story. But then you push harder, dream harder, free your mind, let loose your imagination, and then you don’t need sleep to be in peace, in dream or in any world you choose to be. You become one with your story.
I experienced traces of it, but I couldn’t cross those boundaries. I told myself that fiction isn’t my thing. I may have lied; I don’t know. I’ll try again.
