What happened
to my shortcut plot
I was
18 when I
decided I had
to become a
writer, by hook or
crook.
If
nerds
are people who spent
their time inside a book
or the computer
reading and looking
at God knows
what, then anyone
who has an
ambition to write those
books should be
called : mother of all nerds.
So I was
basically that and street dumb
and had no
experience about life.
I used to
read books, all
sorts of right
from textbooks to
big literature . the kind
of literature where
heroes and heroines
fought for their
freedom and that of
their country’s. I had a good idea
of how they fought,
died and won. I of course
had read other
books too: about poverty, step
fathers and step mothers,
bad mentors, bad weather, bad
voyages..…wolves and bears and other
such miseries that
are much prevalent
and how the
orphan hero/ heroine fought
the circumstances and
got the kingdom
as inheritance or at least was still hoping
to till the last page! But that kind of
heroics didn’t seem to be
of any use
to me as
I was already
as free and
comfortable as was
humanly possible. And then
these stories had
been told and
retold a million
times!
I was not going to be cheep and rewrite something already told by someone, even if it meant to rewrite a Bernard Shaw or Shakespeare! God!
I had a secret ambition to get the Nobel prize someday. So I had to be original.
I
needed
something authentic, the Nobel kind, the literature kind or as authentic
as is possible
without plagiarizing someone’s
brain directly.
Like I
said I was
the mother of
all nerds which
meant I didn’t
get a chance to do drugs nor had an inclination as yet to roam
the streets half
naked. And most
of all I
had as much
sex as a
lonely chimpanzee in
a zoo can
dream of.
I
had to rely
heavily on what
others were doing.
So I
collected stories from
wherever humanly possible. I
gossiped and gossiped.
And then put
it down in
my own words : in
my diary.The synopsis of the manuscript as I penned and sent to literary agents: there is a boy and a girl. The boy and the girl are having an affair. Then the friend of the girl ‘the vamp’ digs her hooks into the boy. All hell breaks loose. The entire school is involved. The friend ‘ the vamp’ is thrown out of school. The manuscript also contains many saucy details like the girl’s parents are alcoholics, the boy’s parents are having an extra marital affair…and there are drug addiction issues. There are vivid sex details between the girl and the boy which are very original and have not been copied from anywhere. The last line is to tell you I have not plagiarized this manuscript or the sex scenes from other books.
If you are interested to represent me let me know.
I got a one page letter and it came by post.
I was anxious. I had never as yet failed in my life and I was not going to start now!
It was a rejection. God!
I was dumbfounded. Couldn’t be a rejection . I read it again. It was a rejection. Shit!
How dare she, the bitch! I was absolutely furious.
Today, if you ask me, I am sure the agent would have loved to send a telegram or come down personally but was restrained by maybe her colleagues or the police.
But back then I wondered : How could the agent write me, ME ! a rejection.
I wanted to prove her wrong. I was not interested to prove myself right or anything.
So I printed a few copies of my manuscript and distributed it to my friends. My mistake I had forgotten that this particular story was as collected by my gossip mongering.
And I paid heavily!
But it is good that I never told anyone about my ambition to get the Nobel prize till date.
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