How 750words.com Helps

I love writing and one of my fervent wishes is to become a bestselling author. 

Sometime back I Googled for stuff that would help me write a novel and I stumbled upon this wonderful competition that is "NaNoWriMo", short for National Novel Writing Month. It is open to anyone who wants to don the writing gloves - the crux is to finish a 50,000 worded novel in a month; honestly a tough task. Yet deeply challenging! A writer should approximately squeeze 1667 words per day and that is where it is quite the meany. I can usually write between 800-900 words a day, twice the number is a feat for me. I definitely needed some start and some push.

Either I tend to run out of ideas or I run out of words. Both ways are bad for a writer and I had to polish my writing to better myself in the literary realm. That is when I discovered 750words.com.

It is a useful site started by Buster Benson (I am ever so grateful to you!) for any blossoming writer, especially ones straining to leap out of the writer's block. You log in, write a minimum of 750 words a day, stick to that routine and feel awesomely glad that you are able to hit that mark every day. The most fantastic thing about this site is the fancy algorithm which categorizes the mood of writing - happy, anxious, upset, affectionate; the mindset - were we negative, positive, introvert, extrovert, certain or uncertain while writing; the rating - PG if your writing carries abusive language and the most frequently used words. It also calculates the total time taken to write, the words per minute and the number of distractions (here a distraction is 3 minutes of non-writing). You have the option to share your writing or keep it just to yourself. 

I am totally chuffed with this serendipitous finding. If you are looking for something to test your writing prowess do try http://www.750words.com/ - it helps a ton, you will not be gutted!

Travelling That Is Bliss

I totally dig travelling and do not mind shelling out fat bucks there. To be in a different place other than home, to see fresh faces and make new friends, taste authentic ethnic cuisine, to buy souvenirs, to immerse in the sheer beauty of a never-before-seen landscape and to click myriad photographs - nothing can get as exciting as this. 

I personally find travel getaways refreshing, relaxing and exhilarating. Not to mention that it broadens my horizon and widens my thought base. 

• There are different people out there to rendezvous - tall and short, black, white and brown, grim and smiling, proud and ever-giving. 
• There are gazillion places to venture to - the breathtaking expanse of flora and fauna just does not suffice the human mind. 
• Likewise, I consider it a silly sin when one restricts himself/herself to her cuisine. If caged within those four walls, one might insanely miss the fantastic varieties of delectable food options. 
• Seeing the same old stuff can pull us into the abyss of boredom. Travelling kicks hard those mundane frames from daily life. It bursts open vivid, vibrant sceneries; the perfect treat for sore eyes! 
• Being an avid photographer (still very very amateur at that!), I do not miss any opportunity to wield my camera and point & shoot at nature, people and other awesome stuff that catch my eye.

Having travelled quite a lot around India, my thirst to foray further is unquenchable. It is two different things - travelling with friends and with family. Each has its own share of enjoyment and free rein that I have come to adore. It is utterly amazing to drift to places every now and then.

Like the famous saying goes - "The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page." - Saint Augustine of Hippo.

Confessions of a Food-aholic

I have been living for close to 3 decades. There are many things that I like, love, adore and that I am crazy about. It is only recently that I discovered myself as an insane foodie and an exotic eating machine who loves to experiment in the kitchen and wolf down as and when I please. My mom says I hardly spend time in the kitchen (that is coz you are there mom, and gran too!:P). Whenever I get the time I try cooking something different. The results are not grandiose, most of the times. Come on, I just experiment! Yet I absolutely feel the unbreakable bond between me and that delicious thing on the plate. It fills my tummy, makes me happy, brings back that long-forgotten smile back on my face and I feel complete. Food completes me. Tom Cruise, hear this!

I have heard people say, "All You Need Is Love". But I say, the best thing that can ever happen to a person is authentic, relishing, mind-boggling, awesome, lip-smacking, salivating, scrumptious food. 

I say, "All You Need Is Food".

The Last of the Oburumus

There was this online random writing competition where I had to use these four words - "Reluctant, plague, magazine, sleep". This is something I tried out of it!

Aba Oburumu was forced to kneel. Hands tied behind him he fought back, his nerves bulging out at the neck. Only he and his brother, Nalo, remained. With guns pointed at his back and hair yanked to one side, Aba reluctantly gave in. His mother, sister and friends were mercilessly killed. There was blood everywhere - obliquely splattered on the walls, coursing crimson on the road, diluted in the gutter. The strong metallic smell permeated the air, portending death. Tears of loss, anger and fear ran down his cheeks. The mysterious plague robbed him of his dear father barely last week. He knelt hopelessly as the heartless men circled Nalo with shotguns and rifles. One of them kicked Aba from behind and he fell flat on his face. The poking spikes of a shoe crushed his jaw, forcing him to watch Nalo plead for his life. Utterly terrified, Nalo cried his lungs out; hand outstretched calling his brother for help. Aba thrashed furiously on the road and cursed himself. They were outnumbered, he was powerless. The sudden click of a magazine resounded and time froze. Blood oozed from Nalo’s temple; his body went limp, lifeless and he looked every bit asleep. Aba let out an inhuman cry. Hisentire tribe was dead and gone. Another familiar click; his vision blurred and he felt searing pain on the back of his head. He shuddered for one last time, never to wake up again. The Oburumus passed on in a ruthless genocide.

Writing - A Panacea to The Boggled Mind

I read books, experiment in the kitchen, surf the net, play shuttle, commune with nature during my once-in-a-blue-moon walk on the terrace, watch TV, sing songs, sleep and write. All these in random obviously! I enjoy every one of these moments but the sheer satisfaction that I get out of writing is unbeatable. Initially, I preferred writing on paper and kind of abhorred the idea of shunning my wonderful black pen. As I enlightened myself with the trivial yet significant merits of digital writing I gradually started liking it.

• There need not be those squiggly strikethroughs. Tap a key and it does the cleaning.
• Where all have I used "Septuagenarian" in my 1256-word document? Search and find it easily. It is a great relief not to scan through the entire document for one word.
• Formatting options are galore.
• I am not wasting paper.
• I am tree-friendly.
• There are still loads more, these ones steal the bunch for me.

Though dismally tangent at the start, my thoughts somehow channel to make some sense. I enjoy my writing moments as they extensively improve my diction, my thought flow. I get to toy with words, play my own word game - I am a self-confessed logophile. To me, the best part of writing is expressing my emotions. Be it happiness, sorrow, anger, hatred, jealousy or anything that just wants to jump off the chest, I put them into writing. It is my remarkable panacea for all those mind wars. 

The Decision

I was itching to write something and wrote this on 10/07/2012 using the prompt "Stars blazed in the night sky".


Stars blazed in the night sky. I lost count of them as I lay down flat on the soft, white sands of the Copacabana beach. There were very few people around me - there was a man dressed in a stark white sleeveless shirt and corduroy trousers puffing cuban cigars, an old lady in a bright floral printed gown, the lone customer of the Seaside Inn (she was the owner probably!) and a couple of shirtless macho teenagers tinkering surfboards, flaunting their abs in front of a threesome group of sophomore girls. And there I was blessed with a stunning ink black complexion in my 33rd year of life. Yes, it was my birthday and I was smothered with many calls and Facebook messages. I am a loner, not married and living alone. Once every month, I visit my parents in the Old Mexican town near the Holy Cathedral. I have had my share of boyfriends and fragile relationships and decided not to venture any further down that mysterious road.

If there was an alpha lioness I guess that would be me - an independent, beautiful African woman who strives hard to educate the children of remote Mexican villages. I write during my spare time and sing my heart out in the shower. I love to eat and I am a self-confessed exotic food lover. I do not like pets, I do not like them caged but love to watch them live in the wild. No wonder I found my solo trip to Kenya the most exhilarating experience in my life - not to forget keeping in utter silence when a pride of lions lurked just a few hundred metres away! 

So many thoughts run in mind, all that I did in the last 32 years of my life and what I would do in the future. There is so much that I do not know, so much that I want to know. There was something missing in my life - definitely not the absence of a man and thereby a family, no not that! 

It was this unsatiated feeling in the pit of my stomach, a longing in my heart, waiting for myself to pull myself out of the ordinary. And there I took a pledge in the dark night of the beach, with the million stars and the waning moon, that I am destined to travel, that I am to tour the world - to meet new people, to learn new cultures, to see the expanse of God’s work, to enjoy the freedom that comes out in pleasure travelling and to explore the real me through my wanderlust adventures.