Ponniyin Selvan Varalaatru Peravai

,As dear Venkatesh has referred I will try to answer in brief with my little knowledge. The answer to this question has 3 parts. 1.Writers' part 2.Readers' part and 3. Publishers' part.
          1.Writers: Kalki, The Man With The Golden Pen, gave a royal place for historical novels in Tamil literary world, and laid a royal path. Many writers followed, many writers borrowed, after him the path narrowed. Historical novels need a lot of work and time, vast research, the skil to keep the tempo, the most important thing the language of the past. He created a huge circle and afterwards the circle became smaller.Many historical writers started their novels with a Lion's Roar an ended with a cat's Miav. A good writer must be a good reader.  A historical writer must read a lot and lot, learn the language before he
begins. It is happy to see now our group generates the power of history and its glory, supports the growth of writers, and I humbly request our writers first to learn the languge of the past.
          2, Readers:  Readers of the previous generation, just freed from the impact of English had the thirst of knowing what we were, wanted to learn the glory of the past. Their lives mostly followed the paths of elders and went in a slow or normal speed and liked to read more. When the generation changed the way of lives became faster and faster and the time spared for reading became lesser and lesser. Next generation wanted to know the other sides of the world. Historical novels lost its glory due to its volume, language.writing skills etc. , Then the faster writing skills like Sujatha and others occupied for a period. Then came the powerful assault, the visual media which converted Readers to Viewers. Now remaining readers have no time to read even a single page story. But the  trend is becoming bored and slowly the historical novels and stories are coming
 in the book form instead of coming in weekly magazines.
         3.Publishers : Once upon a time,  historical writers were welcomed with red carpet by the Magazines. Later generation of Editors of magazines centered only on sales and replaced the writers with cinema, TV and politics. They allowed famous personalities to scribble something rather than allowing a historical writer. The historical writers became endangered spieces for them. Some few magazines very rarely recall the old memories. Even Kalki Weekly wants only to repeat Amarar Kalki's writings now and focussed on cinema, tv and politics.
         But, I strongly believe, History will Repeat.

Dear,
 
It is true that historical novels are not as much as published as in earlier days.
 
The main reason being the work involved for writing a historical novel is very very heavy. It is very time consuming and requires as equivalent to make research. Collectiving the error free historical infomation, related period information, culture, dress, food habits, human relations during those time requires lot of energy and efforts.
 
Normally the length of the historical is much higher than ordinary social stories. You may see ponniyin selval has five volumes and runs more than 300 chapters. I hope it was published continously for the period exceeding three years. The weekly magazine are not much willing to publish the lenghty historical stories. 
 
The publishers are also not much willing to publish the very lengthy stories, which conusme lot of papers and period of return of profit is much larger than selling ordinary stories.
 
The readers are also not much willing to buy costly and bulky histroical novels. The latest trend is that get a chepaer books without worrying the paper quality just read it and through it.
 
Use and throw technqiue is the order of the day and no body is willing to keept the book for a longer period and refer at later date.  You may see even God gifted Balakumarn stories are selling in the platform  in dirty papers at cost of Rs 7.50/-
 
Now you understand why  the publishers are also not much interest in bringing the very lengthy historical novels in good quality papers. 
 
My wonderful historical novels padma viugam and kadarathu kattalagi, which was developed with very sincere and heavy efforts could not get published because of the above reaons.
 
Many publishers advised me to reduce the size of the novels and bring back. However my policy is once written, it is written. I dont want to reduce because of sombody's wish. Instead i can write a new one.
 
I found much hurt if some body compels me to reduce the pages or length 
 
The page requirement could not be decided by the publisher or even by me and it has to be determined by God only.
 
You may see that Ramayan could be told in a single sentece or in several pages as done by kamban. If we give restrictions to kamban to write Ramayan in two pages what will he write? or if we comple kalki to write sivakamiyin sabatam in three pages, what will he write?. No body could compel the author to write brifly, shortly or even lengthy. As the thoughts are coming from god and we writers are only instrument for writing, No body to compel to cut short the thoughts and write according to their requirements.
 
There are many authors like me faces such  similar difficulties. 
 
However, When I am free I read my golden historical novels i.e either padma viyugam or kadarathtu kattalagi  and I am still enjoying   and cherrishing my old memories even today.
 

Dear VJ
        Your question looks very simple. But the answer is very big and differ from writer to writer and publisher to publisher. I can explain the 2nd part of your question easily, ie. how a story from writers draft moves to actual print. This may be also the same for all publishers.
        But the 1st part, ie. how a plot of the story forms, developes, how itcomes out is somewhat difficult to understand. Writers, especially historical writers are different species. Their observations are somewhat little more keen and different from others and during their obserild up, characters and places formed, After that they will wander like ghosts to get informations and inscriptional supports, visit places, until a point of satisfaction arrives. Then comes the way of presenation. This vary from writer to writer. (for example, when I was going to Tirucherai I crossed the little village Vanduvancheri. It is actually Vandazhancheri, the native place of Kalingathu Parani Karunakara Pallavan. The title Pallavan gave the spark. How come the small village in the interior Chola Kingdom was the birth place of Karunakaran and his title Pallavan belongs to the country
which was at more than 150 kms away.This question developed into the novel Maguda Vairam and came in Kalki.
       To every writer, each story has its own origin. That is known to their hearts only. If I explain more, it will go a long way and will go to many pages. If we have a chance to meet, I will explain this in person.

Thsy will be nice Sir.

thanks and regards / sps

> Where are is the meeting?


marina beach. we usually meet behind gandhi statue. if arrivals are large we sit in the lawn next to the skating ring.
if smaller walk upto the molaga bajji stall

venketesh


>
> ~ Udanks
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> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 11:14 PM, Sivapathasekaran