Someone came up with the idea of creating an index of their articles on Medium and I finally caught up with it. Here is a categorized list of my articles which I will keep on updating as I write new ones.
Index: Writing
Index: Life
Index: Authorpreneurship
Index: Learning
Index: Productivity
Index: Travel Stories
About Me
I am a Gen X who has quit competitive life to lead a creative life. Two years ago, I said goodbye to a six-figure income and became a full-time writer.
I write both fiction and non-fiction. With my fiction, I entertain readers who enjoy character-driven stories. …
PRODUCTIVITY
The challenge starts today.
Violinist Hilary Hahn started a 100 Days of Practice project. She posted a video of her practicing violin on Instagram for 100 days with #100daysofpractice and invited others to join her. That started a movement.
Austin Kleon (the writer of How To Steal Like an Artist) came up with a grid to log his progress for 100 days. He calls it PRACTICE to SUCK LESS grid.
To get good, you first have to be willing to be bad. Don’t practice to get good, practice to suck less. — Austin Kleon.
I thought it was a brilliant idea. You can use…
PRODUCTIVITY
But energy management does. And so does mind management.
Late in the nineteenth century, Frederick Taylor grabbed a stopwatch, stood next to a worker, and instructed him to pick a chunk of iron and move it using a specific set of movements. He then timed him.
He did this repeatedly until he had the perfect combination of movements for moving the chunk of iron efficiently.
Taylor then taught those prescribed moments to other workers in the yard of Bethlehem Steel. As a result, the productivity of the plant quadrupled.
This was the birth of “time management.”
The concept swept through the industrial world, and productivity became the aim of each industry.
Before Taylor’s stopwatch measurement of…
Master those, and you can write any story.
In the summer of 2015, I wrote the first draft of my first novel.
Like the thousands all over the world, I wanted to see whether I could churn out 50,000 words in one month while participating in NaNoWriMo.
I did.
But it was not a novel—just words.
Then began the laborious process of turning those words into a novel. Over the years, I converted that first draft into a compelling story with a strong protagonist and an engaging opening scene.
But there was still one problem with it. My story sounded terrible. It was failing the sentence level.
I…
FICTION — SHORT STORY
Saturday, 8 May
If you ever get a chance to come to the South of India, I urge you to come and visit me.
I stand forlorn on a hill overlooking the valley, crumbling with the winds of time.
There was a time when I was revered and famous. My tapering ceilings decorated with amorous apsaras, posing gods. Statues of bellowing elephants guarded my doors.
Hardly anyone ever comes to me to pray these days, but there was a time when sounds of bells and prayers filled the air. …
SELF IMPROVEMENT
Where Inspiration leads to intention.
The last few days have been mind-boggling. I am witnessing a paradigm shift happening right inside me. I am amazed at my transformation and the speed with which it is happening.
Many years ago, roughly twenty-plus, I had this tiny desire to write. It was no big deal. I wanted to express myself better, record my story for my children, write some short stories, and maybe a novel someday.
But there was only one problem. English was my second language, and I was terrible at it. …
PRODUCTIVITY
And how to decide which ones to choose.
Two years ago, when I started my creative life, I wanted to do so much. I wanted to start a blog, write for online magazines, write short stories, finish my memoir and write the first draft of a novel.
I also wanted to sketch, paint, and make rock mandalas. And I was committed to starting an online business.
So I embarked on all those projects straight away. I made plans. I bought courses after courses. I scheduled my day so that I can allocate time for each project.
I had worked as a project manager during my working life so…
TRAVEL — ENGLAND, AND SCOTLAND
A day of going back in time
We took a day tour to see Windsor Castle, Bath, and Stonehenge. They were all in the same direction.
The tour bus (or coach as the Londoners call it) started near Victoria station. We were expected to arrive there at 7:45. So paranoid were we being late that we got there at 7:00 AM. What to do?
We decided to roam around and see if anything was open. We started aimlessly in one direction and soon found ourselves in Victoria Street, lined by boutique stores. What was surprising that every shopfront was decorated with flowers, which I was told later…
Medium is on the brink of a change and hopefully in favor of writers.
Yesterday, Medium paid 1000 writers a $500 one-off bonus.
That made a lot of writers happy.
But many good and deserving writers missed out.
They were perhaps not at the right place at the right time.
Had Medium done it a month earlier, I wouldn’t have got it either. I only started publishing daily from 12 April.
Many writers are trying to figure out the motive behind Medium’s action.
Nia Simone McLeod wrote:
Medium has a super smart team. It knows us. I think that this $500 is a bet on us to market their platform for them.
So, instead of investing those marketing dollars in another way, they used the $50000…
I am one of 1000 writers to get a $500 bonus from Medium.
I couldn’t believe it when I opened the email.
I thought it was a mistake. A prank? Or worst one of the fraud emails?
It was not until three other writers reported in a SLACK group that they too got a bonus check of $500 that I realized I had made my first real money from writing.
I have been publishing one article a day for about 27 days now. Before that, I was averaging two articles a week. …
