Radhika Mukherjee's Blog, page 17
June 8, 2014
The One Instant Depression-Buster
Don’t just go quiet and calm to quell the blues. Don’t only meditate and practice mindfulness. What you also need is explosive joy! The kind that breaks through the inertia and all your established patterns of negative thought-spirals.
That’s the quick fix you need to lift the spirits, buoy you up and keep you laughing for days. Your worries will simply melt away. They won’t dare to creep up on you as long as you are insulated with your own brightness.
So do this with me today. Sing with me! Br...
Truth, Flow and Mastery
My ideas about fiction have always been entangled with the idea of ‘truth’. That I may fictionalize a situation or character, but it must stay connected to the truth through either its genesis or the truth of the writing. And as I say this, Keats’ “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” floats up irresistibly at me since I’ve internalized it so much. I love the Romantics! I also love compressed statements of great power, when I write.
The combination of these two factors has made me a writer who actua...
3 Wonderfully Quick and Easy Relaxation Techniques
Sometimes you are so stressed and exhausted that complicated relaxation techniques seem only to add to your burdens. What you want is an instant soothe and I have just the thing for you!
I use these 3 techniques as often as I can and boy do they help!
Here they are:
When pressed, the palms and the soles of your feet send relaxing signals to the body. If you have just two minutes, simply apply gentle pressure evenly to the flat of your hands. Time permitting, follow-up with a light foot massage....
The Space to Write
I have ostensibly a ‘room of one’s own’. In the home I share with my husband, I have turned the spare bedroom into a study and in my Ma’s home – which I visit frequently – I have my own bedroom. But lately, none of these have afforded me the mental space to write at all.
At this very moment there are three noisy urchins (3 sisters of age 12, 10 and 8) ringed around me in the bedroom in my mother’s house (Ma’s adopted a family as usual). Play-actin...
The (Almost) Joys of Planned Writing
There is a freedom and zest, to writing purposefully (or thinking about writing purposefully), with a plan and a plotted story. You are no longer subject to the soul-crushing vagaries of the muse. You take back your own mind and your writing career. You feel more in control.
However, for me, that produces a different type of book. A certain kind of story – the special kind – is still going to be subject purely to inspiration. To the unfathomable recesses of the mind slowly distilling its highe...
January 20, 2013
About : Our Particular Shadows
“Our Particular Shadows” represents some of my earliest, discrete works. These are very short stories, between 400 to 1200 words, of an abstract and experimental nature. They were written to experience the human condition more fully, to processes pain and desperation and happiness through the self, distil them and write about them in the truest manner possible. I envisaged that anyone, from anywhere should be able to read these stories without any filter of gender, class, or nationality and get directly connected to the emotional chaos that lies at the core of these stories.
Our selves, our deepest consciousness are not always coherent, do not always speak in complete sentences, so in my quest to portray the internal dialogue of my narrators, to bring you their unfiltered story, I have had to evolve my very own style of writing stories. Each of these stories is a raw cry of pain. My hope is that I have been able to bring you a tactile sense of the world of these wounded souls and that reading the stories will be a cathartic experience for you.
Here’s the link again:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B2PPM9Q
January 19, 2013
Book Release News: Our Particular Shadows
After a wonderful book cover reveal and setting-up my very own Facebook author page at: http://www.facebook.com/RadhikaWrites, I set off late on 18th January to the forests of Amazon(.com) to submit my book. Now I had promised a release date of 19th January and it was quite late, so I wasn't sure if I would make the release date.
From 11 pm (18th) to 2 am (19th) I re-formatted my manuscript, wrote the book description, wrote an author bio, re-validated my Amazon account and went through all the stages of uploading a book on Amazon, keeping a desperate eye on the clock. I was also able to complete a preview of what "Our Particular Shadows" would look like on various devices.
(Hint: Awesome! )
In the middle of this mad rush, my heart swelled when I saw this:
Copyright
It felt so real! Like this is actually happening, I am a 'real' writer, an Author! It was a wonderful feeling. One that will keep me in the writing space for years to come!
Finally, all the modalities were over, and Amazon informed me that as my book was in English, I could expect it to go live in 12 hours. You know what? They didn't even take that long!
I however, figured out that my book had been live since 7 am only this afternoon, as the confirmation mail had got stuck in my spam folder! But better late than never, right?
So now, here it is!! On the promised release date! I proudly present to you, the exclusive digital abode of "Our Particular Shadows" for the next 90 days:
Take a look and tell me what you think!!
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B2PPM9Q
