It’s maintenance day today. That doesn’t mean there is no post today. You can’t even doubt that because you’re reading it. I was working on introducing the ’subscription by email’ thingy which took me some time. (I’ve removed it temporarily because IE did not like it, will fix it tomorrow). Now what you can do is to add your email in the invisible text box on the sidebar. No amount of crying ‘I’m only human’ would help, you need confirm that you’re indeed a human by verifying your email address. That’s it, everyday, the posts will arrive in your inbox. Personally, I’m not a big fan of email subscriptions. The one thing they completely curb is the beauty of interactions and discussions.

Now what’s going to happen is people sign up with their email address so that they don’t have to type www.vjkrishna.com and check for the posts. This would mean that the comments and interaction in the blog would reduce. I’m not pleased with that. Blogs should be market of views and opinions, not just of the blog author, also that of every reader. But then, why am I spending time in setting this up? Because, it would help you. It sure helps the readership of the blog articles. It is a trade off between 10 readers of which 4 could comment regularly and 100 readers of which 10 could comment regularly.

My advice to you is to subscribe by email if that’s the best you can do. Whether you read the blog from your mailbox or from the web, do leave your comment. That’s certainly easier than writing a blog, isn’t it? When I read something, I might feel ‘hey, that’s good’ or ‘wow, that’s cool’ or ‘oh! this sucks’ or ‘the guy’s clueless’ or whatever. All that I need to do is to just type these feelings in the comment box. As simple as that. If you can substantiate your feelings, that sets up nicely for another round of discussion.

I want to tell about few other things that might not have caught your eye. Look at the top menu bar. You know all about HOME. Then you got ABOUT. That’s where I boast about myself and make you feel inferior. That’s my bit. And then, you see a link for ARCHIVES. On clicking that you’ll see the list of all posts ever posted on this blog. It is also nicely arranged by every month. It shows you the post title and the number of comments in each post. In the menu bar, next to archives, you see COMMENTS. Going into that, you’ll see the excerpts of the last 20 comments posted in this blog. You can click and go to the comment to read it fully.

After comments, you have CONTACT. That’s where you see the contact form. That’s the one you need to use when you want to give me an award or something like that. Type in the details there, your message gets delivered to my email box directly. After that, you see the GRAVATARS. I feel sorry for the ones that don’t use gravatars. It’s simple, free and it’s fun. I don’t think you need more reasons to use gravatars. Yes, you may not know how to set it up but that’s why you have this link in the menu.

To all new bloggers, now that’s your lesson on how to write an article when you have nothing to write

Pardon my ignorance. Yesterday was the first time I heard about ‘Flash Fiction’. This is also known as sudden fiction, micro fiction, post card fiction etc. Normally flash fiction are short stories told under a 1000 words. There are variations. Some expect flash fictions to be under 750 words. There is also a version that says flash fiction should be less than 100 words.

Ernst Hemingway wrote this famous shortest story: “For sale: baby shoes. never worn.” This is about a poor parent who is yet to recover from the disaster of their miscarriage. Imagine the emotional impact created by just 6 words. Reminds me of how much we waste words. Flash fiction is about using less descriptions and adjectives and fillers but still coming up with the same impact.

Here is my attempt at a micro-fiction.

I’m on my bike, waiting for the traffic signal. I should take a right. If I take a left I’ll save 20 minutes but I saw the ‘no entry’ sign on the road. Should I take the long right or the short left? The signal’s goes green. The biker ahead of me takes the left defying the ‘no entry’ signal. That’s my motivation. I take the left folliwing him. From nowhere comes the traffic police and stops me. He tells me “you’re not supposed to enter this road, didn’t you see the sign?”. I say, “sorry sir, the guy before me just took this road”. He says “but he didn’t get caught”.

I guess all zen stories would classify as micro fictions. Little fish in the ocean asking its mom: ‘where is this thing called ocean?’. Zen stories always say it with fewer words but carry a lot of depth. Sometimes, I wonder if it’s possible to create that impact with more words. More words might only kill it.

Four monks decided to meditate silently without speaking for two weeks. By nightfall on the first day, the candle began to flicker and then went out. The first monk said, “Oh, no! The candle is out.” The second monk said, “Aren’t we not suppose to talk?” The third monk said, “Why must you two break the silence?” The fourth monk laughed and said, “Ha! I’m the only one who didn’t speak.”

I never had the patience for reading fictions. I can’t say the same about Flash fictions. It would take me hardly two minutes to read a short flash fiction. I think it is an interesting challenge to try telling a story in less than 100 words. Make an attempt. Will be interesting.

“Anyone can cook” says master chef Gusteau in the movie Ratatouille. What he means is anyone can become a cook. A good cook can come from anywhere. All that you need is passion to cook. Writing is no different. In fact, writing is not so difficult and demanding as cooking. I’ve never tried cooking. As a law-abiding person, I don’t think I’d ever do. But I write. With the growth of internet, everyone is a writer. See, I’m a writer. If you own a blog and start writing about random stuff you are a writer too.

I hear people saying “I don’t have time”. I’d say you don’t need time. All it takes for a decent post is 20 mins. That’s because, you don’t think as you write. Think of a writable topic and keep thinking about what you can write and start organising your thoughts mentally. All this you can do when you’re driving or walking. How long you want to mentally construct the post is up to you. After you’re done with you thought process, when you sit down to write/type, it’s not going to take you more than 20 minutes.

And then, one can say “I’m technologically challenged”. See, I know nothing about my car. I can drive it. I simply don’t understand how it works and I don’t think I need to know that. I never understood how electricity works but that never stopped me consuming power that makes people wonder if it’s a factory over here. Just simply use it. Setting up a blog takes a few minutes. And then it’s just you and your blog. You write and publish. And you keep doing it. There is no need for any special knowledge.

“I don’t think I’m a good writer”. I’m confident that I’m a good writer (you might have a different opinion). I wasn’t able to say this a year back. I own another blog too where I have written about 700 posts. Like other things, writing improves with practice. It’s not like I write something and about 100 million people read and say ‘you’re such a loser’. The fact is, when you start writing you’ll have a very small audience and readership grows with time. It’s ok, if we write poorly. Everybody can talk but does everyone talk well? It’s an art, isn’t it? It can improve with time.

Write about what? All that you need as a writer is some ideas/concepts/topics to write about. To be honest, in a blog like this, I can write about anything. Let me take my eyes off my laptop. What do I see? I see my television. I can write about television, its impact, the programmes I love etc. I turn my head I look at my sofa. I can write about furniture. How we never had any furniture at home once and accumulated all this now. I turn to my right, I see my balcony. If a balcony cannot inspire you to write, what will? It’s not at all difficult to write especially if you don’t restrict yourself to a shell.

What if I write? Writing is fun. It truly is. You need to experience it to feel it. You’re the creator. It makes you more confident, it can make you think better, it can get you good friends, it can get you money or even a career, if you so wish.

I never liked writing diaries. Writing stuff with a pen is so damn difficult and you can’t write at the speed of your thoughts. So, writing has always been boring for me. I feel so much comfortable on the qwerty, I love ‘writing’ with my laptop. Also, I always thought that someone could steal my diary or I could lose it. Not that anyone could do millions from it but it’s just that no one wants their diaries to be read by others while people always love to get their hands on others’ diaries.

Because a written diary is so bloody personal, it wasn’t even fun. Moreover, as a kid, I’ve seen in many movies that a diary in the wrong hands would be the plot-twisting thing to happen. I was always scared of losing that diary that I never wrote. Also, I thought that you needed interesting stuff to write in there. In a very routine life, I thought interesting things happened only once in a while and the idea of updating the diary as and when something interesting happened, did not sound interesting to me.

The idea of a blog thrilled me to no end. A blog is generally defined as an online diary. But one should be either insane or naive to think a blog replaces the good old diary that we know. Blogs thrive with comments and discussions. So the thing about stuff being personal, secretive or sacred has gone out of the window. The expectation here is that someone reads and appreciates.

Why did I start this blog? One is, just to ‘write’. I love writing, as in expressing my views and opinions. So I love talking too. I think blogging improves your writing. Anything that you do over and over again, you tend to get better at it, by sheer law of averages or by natural trial and error. I don’t think writing can be an exception here for a person who refuses to think his writing can get worse with more writing. The other reason is, just to share my thoughts and experiences while I get some fans along the line. Let’s admit it. In blogosphere, you write because there are people to read it.

Hoping to write more.