It first happened in 2019, when a fellow flight passenger recognized me and congratulated me for my book. I was as amazed then as I am now whenever someone recognizes me. Being an author means lurking behind a whole Universe of stories, in the shadows. Authors rarely get the pictographic limelight that stars do. And honestly... we don't seek it. But yes, when it happens, I am naturally as excited as the person who recognizes me. We are both elated to meet and greet each other... Always.
I would just say to all of you that we are all born storytellers. We are equipped with the intelligent abilities to speak and write because we are supposed to be able to narrate things to others. It just depends upon our affinity towards writing as a profession.
If you have the zeal for it, then you should start right now. You have an endless bracket to grow and you can only improve by consistently doing it. Want to write a poem, a story, a book, a series, etcetera? Start today.
Don’t worry about whether it would be published or whether people would like it. That comes later. The important thing is to start. Keep revising what you have written, keep introspecting, keep learning and you wouldn’t even realize when and how much you have improved and how far ahead you have travelled. Just start…and don’t stop.
I started writing my first book in 2012, when I was 15 years old. It was a weirdly accurate sequence of incidences. I cannot say I had a particular day of enlightenment when I went up to the mirror and told myself ‘I want to be a writer’. I had an innate affinity towards telling stories and narrating experiences, both my own and the ones I had read, seen, heard of or most importantly imagined.
Going ahead with my random scribbles and narrations, there was one fine phase when I had resolved to give a concrete shape to them. Initially, when I read how much diligence this field requires, I was demoralized and had almost given up… but I soon realized that the satisfaction and jubilation I feel after having written what I wanted to was far greater than the dissatisfaction I could’ve faced or maybe had faced in case it did not get appropriate reception or was rejected.
Lastly, I didn’t leave it be for the future or for when I was old enough or capable enough. I started there and then, and kept going.
