Longlisted in Grey Oaks Short Story Competition, Work on the Novel Continues

Heartening news. I have been long listed in the Grey Oaks Short Story Competition. Publication in US Bright Lights will be for the short listed stories. Anyway, it's some good news after a drought of good news in my writing career. So, I am sharing it with readers of my blog here.

The work on the novel continues. I am in the last stretch of line editing and still I am changing a lot though not the plot. I have mentioned before - in a forum - that I had the plot written in Excel and pasted on a cardboard in front of me when I was writing and revising. This is because I don't want to meander. Some writers find this useful. There are also writers who say that they don't plan anything ahead of what they write. As does Stephen King. But I find Stephen King tedious. There are sections where he goes on and on, on what can be termed pretty much as a tangent.

I read somewhere recently that you cannot divest words from the culture of its people. The study of words, the writing of words is one of the world's best and biggest human enterprises. Now news is rife in channels and newspapers The News of the World (NOTW) has been closed by Rupert Murdoch. This is not good news for the printed word. Isn't the printed word the transmitter of thought, ideas, incipient literature? A newspaper article is literature in a hurry. Much of the veracity of this statement has been tested in recent times. Newspapers these days contain gory aftermath of terror attacks with scant regard for reader's sentiments (see the latest coverage of the terror attack in Bombay in the press and television). There should be some restriction on showing of blood and gore. Foreign media blanks out such news, or, has a rider, "the following program may be unsuitable for certain audiences." Then it becomes a choice of the viewer.

Well I am rambling. Will stop now.