Why birth stories don’t sell?

A very small publication catering to the residents of the this small town in Southern U.S. announced the theme for its January issue as “Birth” and invited stories for its feature section. This is one area I could just go on and on  until someone said, “Enough.” But, no one said then while I spent a night to submit the story within deadline.

A week later, the editor politely replied that as much as she enjoyed the story, she thought it wouldn’t be an ideal piece to be published. I took it in my stride - my first rejection. Moreover, it was written in haste and was high on emotion.

I was working on my assignment for the writing course and had to submit 3 pieces. I thought this rejection was an ideal candidate for the assignment to hear from my tutor who is forthright in telling stuff as it is, and I love him for that.  I sent in my assignment on 30th and his comments arrived yesterday. The rejection didn’t hit me as much as his comments on the piece. He wrote, ” Please don’t take this personally. But every woman goes through this and has a similar story to tell. You need to look a t a different angle and there’s a beautiful idea sitting right there on your article. Why don’t you instead work on that?”

He hit the nail on the head. I mean the world is inhabited by close to 7 billion people. And, we all just didn’t pop out. Every mother’s tale is important and interesting only to her. so, it’s best kept to myself. Lesson learned.

reflections gets a new home

Cross posted from my old blog :

I’m a little late this time. Two years is a little late in my dictionary, how is it in yours?

This move was not planned. It was a challenge; a resolution I made to myself that I had to keep at all costs. With two articles submitted and an assignment completed - all within the respective deadlines in the middle of December, I felt excited and nothing to look forward to. So, I casually mentioned to V that I might as well get my domain and move my blog before the year ends; he has been insisting on this for two years now and finally gave up. For which he casually remarked, “You mean this year?” I didn’t say anything then but made a mental note to get it up.

One thing lead to another and I had enough on my hands - LG’s birthday party, actual birthday, holidays, travel planning and bookings, LG falling sick on and off which meant trips to the Ped and finally I succumbed to fever on 28th Dec. I recovered on the morning of 31st and still believed this could be done provided everything went on fine. So, I just picked a wordpress theme to my taste, signed up with a hosting provider in Bangalore who provided excellent support and bam! the site was up within two hours while LG took his afternoon nap.

When V came back form work on the evening of 31st December, I presented to him the new home of r e f l e c t i o n s. For me, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect and achieving my goal for once. 500 posts in four and half years.

The future of this blog still remains indecisive. For now, I am not going to redirect the URL to the new one as it contributes a good chunk of my adsense revenue. And, the new site is a still a lil rusty and needs some working upon. However, all new posts will go there and this will be the last post on this space. Thank you for stopping by!

Ads on Indian Television in 2007 : The Best and The Worst

The Best Ads:

Idea Mobile - Featuring Abhishek Bachchan where every street and person is identified by their mobile number

Airtel - two kids playing football across the border of two countries, jumping the fence to dribble in no-man’s land.

Vodafone - a guy waiting in elevator to meet his soul mate because his horoscope for the day said “you will meet your soul mate in the elevator today”.

Maruti Zen Estilo - Little Boxes - Maruti took it off air after some months as it didn’t initiate a good response.

HDFC Standard Life pension plans- A retired gentleman telling his wife to fire the maid, gardener so as to save money. Only to surprise her with a holiday in Singapore.

Tanishq Diamond Jewellery with Nafisa Ali in the center dancing to the tunes of Badan pe sitare

The Worst Ads:

All the SRK ones - Nokia, Airtel, Santro and Dish TV