Writing a Novel

Today was a wonderful day, I've been reading my novel since morning and I'm only half way through it. Reminds me of the days when I read others' novels and was desperate to reach the climax, but I had to go through all the pages in between. In that sense, finally reading my novel is tending to reading somebody else's novel and that's a satisfactory thing, I suppose.

When did I decide to write the novel? I remember having read Jahangir's autobiography sometime probably in Class XI. And after I completed reading it, I just randomly sat down, took out a register and began writing. Initially, I calculated how long I need to write to make a novel. Thankfully, I over-estimated four times over. So, what that meant is that I thought I had to write eight such registers, but I've written just about two-three and it's an average novel length right now.

A lot of my novel consists of disjointed events that I wanted to write about. Like I wanted to write about the moral brigade, so I put in that chapter. I wanted to write about staying away from home and the fears and paranoia of doing so, thus I put in a couple of chapters about that. These are issues I wanted to talk about, and on the way I tried to weave it all together by a narrative. Hence, as of what I see it, the narrative does lose hold at several places, but I think the heart is in the right place still. My novel isn't pretentious, it talks about things I want to write. Like ambition, failure, dejection, attachment etc.

I've sat on it one full year. I remember when I was writing with fury - back in April last year, right after my rejections from the Ivy Leagues, I was writing frantically and completed at least half of my novel in those days. So many of the characters in my novel I created in those days, and almost all my favourite scenes (including my favourite where Mehrunissa sits on the banks of the Hooghly reflecting on life) I have written in that duration.

Yes, that reminds me of how the novel is also a story of my journey across India. I've written about Kolkata, about Diamond Harbour, about crossing the Ganga on a river bridge and the like. And I've imagined places I want to go to - Darjeeling, London etc. So, every time I went to an exciting place or saw an exciting sight, I put it down in my novel. I would have put the Sunderban trip too, but I can't change the plot of my novel at this stage.

So, my novel is done. I'm half-way through what, I promise, will be the last edit. After this, I'll never look back at the novel unless a publisher tells me to. Because probably I've crossed that stage, but editing a novel beyond a point will simply kill it.