Have you been visiting my blog
lately? You would then know all about the Game of Blogs and the story writing
competition that I was taking part in last month. This one is one of a kind competition
that you can think of. You write a single story in collaboration with 9 other
bloggers across the country! How amazing is that. What did we do in the past
three weeks? We talked, we typed, we moulded the characters, we let our
imagination go wild and we came up with our sci-fi thriller – The Awakening.
Now that three weeks of action is
over and we await the results I want to look back on the past three weeks. When
I first received the mail from Blog Adda with the list of my team members – I didn’t
know a single blogger in that list. I knew a lot of blogger friends who were
participating in the contest but no known faces were in my team. But if you
know me you will know I love to meet and know new people. I love to observe. So
meeting and collaborating with new bloggers was even more fun.
Okay for you guys here is my team
By Lines – and the amazing authors behind it. Yeah we call ourselves authors
now, given the amount of words we have written, edited, re-written and given the
amount of research we have put in for this - we are all no less than any
author.
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| That is team By Lines for you |
Anmol is the captain of our ship and we fondly now call him ‘The Axe
Man’. He provided all the required axing in all the correct places. He is the
only blogger I knew in my team. We have been visiting each other’s blogs for some
time. Go check out his blog anmolrawat.blogspot.in
Preethi, is our editing goddess and we made sure nothing went
published before a final edit by our editor in chief. The germ of the sci-fi
thriller originated from our darling editor and now at the end of it she
sometimes spots UFOs in Bangalore!! So much thinking and writing we say. Preethi
is also a published author and her latest Second
Life is out in the market now. She is also an amazing artiste. You need to
check out her sketches in her blog Tulips and Me.
Soumya, who is also a law student, like one of our main character
Cyrus, is our second editor. Do check out her tales in her blog Shall we Callit a Tale?
Paresh, our busy man provided content and chapters. He was also
kind enough to give me admin rights in his blog so that I could do the last
minute editing, formatting, link updating and all sorts things. Thanks Paresh
for being such a sport. Here is his blog
Ashutosh, this Dabbang guy (That’s what his Twitter username is) surprised
us with his chapters. You can check out his blog here.
Prerna, is I guess the youngest member of our team. She provided us
content entertainment and a good dose of Bollywood gossip. She is the founder of
Panda Entertainment and is also a die hard Deepika
Padukone fan who has walked the Red Carpet with the star! You are lucky girl.
Ramanath, our next busy man also helped us with some good
chapters.
As for me, what can I tell you
about me? Well yeah, I wrote, re-wrote, combed the net for all sorts of
available info on aliens, UFO, alien detecting material and chipped in with
some editing too. And at the end of it my knowledge on UFOs and aliens have
grown in leaps and bounds and I am sure both Preethi and me can write a thesis
on them now. Lol
If you were wondering why I mentioned
only 8 bloggers and not ten - we went into the competition with two inactive
bloggers. But never the less we had a compact team
and the most important part – had a good team.
To get 8 minds to think and focus
on a single vision is difficult but who wants it fair? What is the fun in team
bonding unless you overcome some challenges? And believe me a team grows
stronger when you jump over some hurdles and every team member realizes what
is good and where the strength lies – the strength is always in being with the
team, in thinking as the team. Okay before I start sounding like some HR
manager giving a boring lecture let me tell you all the fun we had.
Quite early on we had decided we
will take the difficult path and will not write a run of the mill love story,
or stories of betrayal etc etc. And in raking our minds on ideas of this ‘different’
story over Google Hangouts, Mails and WhatsApp we finally chose to go the extraterrestrial way. Yeah why not a sci-fi thriller, we asked! And with it
started our research on aliens. Having aliens in Mumbai sounds goofy but hello
if Rakesh Roshan could get aliens to Kausali in Nainital then why not Mumbai! Okay disclaimer:
Our story is not ‘inspired’ from Koi Mil Gaya or ET or anything like that. You
could read the entire story to decide for yourself.
The team had spent days and
nights in reading and editing each chapter. I remember Preethi editing chapters
on her 10th anniversary night before and after her dinner date! We
all thank you Preethi. I used to read hundreds of WhatsApp pings while driving
back home in the traffic signals. I have also spent days researching on aliens
sitting in meetings at work! Our axe man Anmol spent nights in drafting stories
adding and subtracting plots so that we could edit in the morning. I wrote my
last chapter in a flight from Kolkata to Bangalore! Soumya chipped in with her
chapters even if it was late in the night after her Garba events. Yes we need
to keep in mind we spent our last week in the challenge amidst all the
festivals around, but we all worked in synergy to keep our alien friends happy.
Where else do you find such awesome team work?
We have also had some really
spooky stuffs happening with us in the course of writing the story. Preethi’s
phone started acting weird and she couldn’t type anything without typing three
lines of emoticons! Her broadband suddenly died when she was about to post and
she had get into her neighbor’s connection to post! Most of these spooky things
happened with our editor in chief and she even spots UFOs and it makes me
look out of the window to check if really I am also in this alien hangover!!
But yeah unfortunately I haven’t spotted anything so far!
But you know at the end it all
paid off. We have quite an enthralling story.
At the end of Round 1 we were at the third position among 30. And by the end of
Round 2 we were at Top 2!!! Isn’t that like really amazing.
The day the results
came out I was jumping and tweeting around and people at my home thought I had
gone crazy. I am quite confident of our story and feel it has a good dose of
drama, entertainment, mystery – all that you need in a good novella. And if you
are a Bollywood director (or even Hollywood) you are most welcome to pick up
our story and don’t worry we’ll also write the screen play for you!! We have actually
debated if this was a Hollywood movie who will play the character of Tara – Megan
Fox, Scarlett Johansson or Mila Kunis!!! Lol
I am really happy that I took up
this Game of Blogs challenge and in that course met such great bloggers. Thanks to Blog Adda. Now I
have found great friends in Preethi, Soumya and Anmol. And guess what I have
also found one common thing between Me Preethi and Soumya – we all love Hrithik
Roshan like crazy!!! And Soumya has even met him barging into a press con – you
go girl… I will do that someday!!!
Read the chapters from Beginning - Chapter 1 by Anmol Rawat