A Novel about a Novel

I'm publishing a whole novel on Medium in installments. It's a novel about publishing of a novel. Obviously, the idea hit me in the wake of my first novel being accepted by a great publisher.  Shit, I forgot to write about it here in my blog, a serious lapse on my side, but that's me, my habit of keeping dumb when I should be actually shouting out.

Yesterday I wrote my fifth installment. And now I feel a bit exhausted. I'm a minimalist by nature, but these past few days I've knocked out 800 or so words regularly. This naturally takes its toll on my body and mind. I want to take a deep breath now. I need to take a second wind.

The following is a list of chapters arranged sequentially in case you've not read it or just want to take a look.

Publishing of a novel
 (How I got my book deal for my novel which I wrote back in 2000)

Serendipity and After/2
(An editor's dilemma)

Serendipity and After/3
(Editor-publisher face-off)


Serendipity and After/4
(How things get sorted out and the publishing house embraces peace at last)

Serendipity and After/5
(About a Facebook post in which I was tagged)

As a writer, I'm curious what the readers think about this novel and how their reading experience is. So, please come in with your feedback. I will appreciate them. Thanking you.

James Wood on Joy Williams

She writes at a slight angle to the culture, literary and otherwise. Her fiction is easy to follow and hard to fathom; easy to enjoy and harder to absorb.

How to Write a Sex Scene

If you want to write an excellent sex scene, you have to liberate it from the idea of a sex scene. Like I was saying before about violence, you have to thread sexuality through every part of a character or a person's life, rather than limiting it to a titillating few pages where something juicy happens. You have to understand that sexuality is omnipresent in your body — your entire life.

--Lidia Yuknavitch

Is it good fiction?

Yesterday I posted a critique of a short fiction by Oliver Shiny on Medium. Please do read it if you have time, and weigh in with your comments on my critique. 

George Saunders Quotes

I’ve always – always – thought of myself as a fiction writer with comic inclinations. 

I’m a fiction writer. I use any- and everything I need to get certain effects that I’d describe as ‘emotional effects’ – to do the good old aesthetic work that stories do. 

do whatever it takes. Steer toward the energy. Don’t worry about being edgy or not being edgy or being soppy – if the emotion of the story is real and earned, it sort of retroactively justifies whatever form you’ve used.

What’s going to make my work vital and new is my taste, applied maniacally, over sufficient time.

I really want to play, and discover the internal dynamics of the story – find out, via intuition, what thrills the story wants to deliver.