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
11 comments
I so regret missing this
Nice to read this… and yes, sci-fi thriller was something definitely unique among the 30 stories we saw this time. 😀
Sounds like a fun challenge – congratulations on your team coming together and making it happen!
Wow…All the best Tina.. I wish you all the best!
Random Thoughts Naba – Found You!
I can't tell you how I felt after reading this post. These were one of the best moments of my life and by all means I will cherish them forever. Thank you for the kind words about me.
So glad to be a 'By Lines' member. 🙂
this was the best networking activity i have taken part in
thanks Roshan, that's what our team is about 'unique'
Thanks Laurel yeah that was too much fun
thank you Naba…. hope we win
We are glad to have you axe man 🙂
I read again and was smiling again at the middle of the night. So glad to have met you all. I hope we keep this friendship intact in future as well. God and BA did this for a purpose. Let us see how far it goes.