2018: My Best Year Yet
Read about the lows from where I began this journey in July 2017 here.
Writing
The turning point for me came in Dec 2017. I had been invited to participate as a writer in the inaugural Manipal Writers Workshop in the lovely coastal university town of Manipal, Karnataka. For two weeks, I hung out with writers and readers and words. I called myself a writer and believed it. My brain shed old systems inherited from full-time corporate work and adopted new systems of artistry. I didn’t know it then, but I had turned a corner.
Through Jan and Feb 2018, I experimented with my writing. I played around with form, style, content. I wrote anything — short stories, children’s stories, poetry. I just kept putting words down, not knowing where they would lead. All the while, my novel incubated in my mind.
At the end of Feb, I began work on my novel. I had written an opening scene two years previously, which I had also workshopped. Now, for the first time in two years, I was able to progress beyond the opening scene. All of the messing around and playful experimentation with words for the previous three months helped tremendously. Words burst forth and my novel surged forward. I wrote steadily and continuously. I averaged 4000 words a week for ten weeks. By the end of Apr, I had written most of my novel; I now needed to close it.
I read tremendously during this period, knocking back an incredible seventeen books from the end of Feb to the end of May. These were varied across gender, style, age, geography, language, subject. See the full list at the end of this post.
I feared for the end of my novel. Would it be left hanging like so many of my other projects? Would I be able to see it through? I consulted with writer friends, many from the Manipal Workshop. I travelled. I incubated and experimented. Most importantly, I sat down regularly to write. And by the end of Jul, I had a completed manuscript of 50,000 words.
I kept the manuscript aside to let it cool. I returned to it in Nov. A few minor edits and tweaks, and it still reads strong. I have written a novel!
Dreams for 2019 :
1. Give my novel the best chances for commercial success, starting with signing on an agent and a publisher.
2. Explore writing for screen and stage— shorts, sketches.
Acting
2018 was my busiest year yet. I acted in four stage productions.
Tahatto’s Remember Remember — urban folktales — and A Funny Thing Called Life — sketch comedy — continued their runs from 2017, including outstation shows in Chennai and Hyderabad in Mar.
Through the monsoon months of Jul to Sep, I was the Nobel-winning scientist Dr. James Watson in Bangalore Little Theatre’s production of Photograph 51 — the race to discover DNA — performed across Bangalore’s hallowed prestigious scientific institutions.
In Oct, Tahatto premiered a visionary adaptation of George Orwell’s classic, Animal Farm, to a packed house at the reputed Ranga Shankara Theatre Festival in Bengaluru; I was Snowball.
Dreams for 2019 :
1. Explore acting for screen — feature films, shorts, ads.
2. Explore voice acting — audiobooks, podcasts, radio ads.
Consulting
In the second half of 2018, I began consulting on brand strategy. I partner with design studios and advertising agencies to run branding workshops and develop brand communication strategies for startups. I consult on a part-time basis with an ad agency on a set of their brands.
Dreams for 2019 :
1. Explore more interesting one-off projects.
2. Improve efficiency of time spent at and money earned from work.
Thoughts from 2018
Everything is possible. The most important thing to me is to have control over my time. I find that when I have a say in how I choose to spend my time, magic happens — people present themselves, opportunities open up.
Seventeen books, Feb 26 — May 23
1. Hickory Dickory Dock, Agatha Christie
2. Blue Pills: A Positive Love Story, Frederik Peeters
3. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
4. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
5. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid
6. The Adivasi Will Not Dance, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
7. The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes
8. Wrong Number and Other Stories, Mahasweta Devi
9. A Story of a Brief Marriage, Anuk Arudpragasam
10. The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
11. The Small-Town Sea, Anees Salim
12. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Mario Vargas Llosa
13. Temporary People, Deepak Unnikrishnan
14. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, Amitav Ghosh
15. Blasphemy, Tehmina Durrani
16. Comfort Me With Apples: More Adventures at the Table, Ruth Reichl
17. Astonishing Splashes of Colour, Clare Morrall
