As the World Turns.............

As the world turns, Shilpa is happy for 2 reasons:
1) She is eating, praying and living her dream job.
2)She has completed the first chapter of her novel.

She is completely immersed in the beauty of the city she is working in now. And her protagonist (female) from her novel has also landed a job in a big city and admiring it so far. Although one might think that Shilpa is injecting her identity into the character's identity,  it is not completely true. May be few shades of the character ( Neha Reddy ) are borrowed from the author herself but Neha Reddy has a different persona all together. Drifting from comparisons between Neha Reddy and her author, this novel has an intense plot, a clear picture of circumstances that will shape every day life of Neha. Her struggle to put up with her Love, her Friends, her Family and above all her diminishing Virtues to get that perfect life. A life which seems hopeless once she gets to live it.

Wow...speaking in third person always makes me feel special. Anyways, so that was the extremely skimmed version of my novel. My research for novel is becoming crucial these days. I am studying the character/attitude of every girl/woman i come across with. I am recording my own instincts that generated out of though process on a certain issue. I chose four famous females from four different expertise to extract and refine the qualities onto my protagonist's character. Little did i realise that apart from being an author, i need to be a model, a teacher, a doctor, a mother, a man, a child and  a beggar who day dreams riches, in order to bring life into my characters.

But connecting with my characters is so enthralling that i am developing a  motherly love towards them. For instance I feel so sad whenever i write about the beggar (an important character) because i have to keep him starving and make him feel miserable. But then at the end of the day i realize he is fictional.

An author should definitely bond with his/her characters. She should walk with them, live with them, talk with them and embrace good and bad associated with them. When my characters took life with a medium(pen) that connected my brain and my paper, i felt satiated like a mother did after giving birth to her child. The energy flow from pen to paper was non-stop driven with brain's processes. And with similar experiences for almost a month, i was driven to my goal of finishing the first chapter. And this post is the review of what went behind the scenes and a sneak peak into the story. May be i should post details of every chapter i finish, in future.

And as for the update on my Orbis Terrarum challenge, i am getting absorbed by Afghanistan's  blaze with " A 1000 Splendid Suns". And i also am  living amongst ancient Indian epic characters from Mahabharata with Chitra Divakaruni's "The Palace of Illusions". This book is not my entry in Orbis Terrarum but recommended by a fellow blogger friend. For me Mahabharata has always been an  intense saga which created a curiosity every time i indulged in it. Chitra surely filled that curiosity of mine once again .....