When I participated for the first time, I was tensed because
I tried to get as many words in as possible.
In the process, I just didn’t know
what to do with a few of my characters, and they were abandoned – lost in needless
verbiage - when I ran out of time.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed turning around a novel in just
three days.
The novel was set in the backdrop of the outbreak of plague
in Surat (the western Indian city in the state of Gujarat) in 1994.
The second year wasn’t particularly productive because my
experiment of weaving several ghost stories into a short novel didn’t work out
particularly well.
The editor of the contest wrote a small note to me saying she
liked the ghost stories (which, I guess, meant she didn’t like the main novel).
This year – fresh from a visit to India, which was both
exhilarating and disturbing – I wrote a story about a star-crossed couple who
marry clandestinely but commit suicide when they can’t fight caste rigidities
and orthodoxies.
Adopted Daughter is a story is about the man who gets the
couple married and his accidental encounter with the couple’s daughter, more
than two decades later while on a trip to India from Canada.
My writing pace was even – clocking close to 6,000 words
each day. After some severe editing, I managed about 17,000 + words which I
uploaded in the afternoon of September 9.
It may not win my any prize, but I enjoyed the experience and am feeling good
about my effort. Image: http://www.3daynovel.com/
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