I still remember the days of my childhood, as a little girl, when I used to ask my parents to buy me books. When the other kids of my age were busy playing with Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars, I was out there, grabbing hungrily onto Champak, Nandan, Chandamama, Chacha Chaudhary, Pinki, Billu and the likes. And if that wasn’t enough, once I was done reading my books, and my parents denied to buy more books for the month, I would secretly jump on to the literature they used to read like the famous Sarita, Mukta and Grahshobha. I also remember how many scoldings I used to get from my elders because of the same, reading literature that wasn’t meant for me.
But little did we all know that the same habits were shaping my complete future. Books after books, comics after comics later on developed into a habit of reading full flashed novels. I read my first novel when I was fourteen, and it was Chetan Bhagat’s “One Night At The Call Center” and the second one was Ravinder Singh’s “I Too Had A Love Story”. After that, I stopped counting. I was too immersed into the world of books. When other kids were running to English tutions, I was already good at it, thanks to my years of reading.
Till the time I turned sixteen, I had already started writing little somethings like quotations and poems, and surprisingly, I felt even more of peace and positivity in writing than I felt in reading. To be the God of a world you create, no matter how small or big, or unreal and imaginary, but you can create anything you want, convey anything you desire. Reading and writing became my two best companions as a teenager.
I joined CA course after I completed my intermediate, and simultaneously took admission in a bachelor course. I still was devoted to my novels, but soon enough my shelf was filled with books and practice manuals of taxation and accounting and laws and quickly, I started finding it hard to give active time to my little love amidst the chaos of classes, office, exams, training programmes of a professional course. Needless to say, it was hard to read a love story when you were preparing for your next attempt after failing twice in your exams. CA was a hard nut to crack, but I still reached the final level and then something changed in my life.
You get almost a break of 2-3 years in CA to prepare for final. In this gap, I finally found sometime to return to my world to books apart from my academics. In the initial months of this break, I took a lot of time for myself after years of slogging and started reading and writing aggressively. In 2013, I started writing my own blog on Google's blogger named "The SoulHome", a place which was home to my soul. I started enjoying writing more than ever and I used to research and write peculiar blogs and then used to share it all around. Many-a-times, I used to get visitors and readers from countries like US, UK etc and it meant literally the world to me. Then, in 2015, I wrote my ever first short story, "The Sleepless Night" which was liked by many people.
It was then I realised that I wanted to become a writer, more so an author, because with the power of my words I was able to reach people sitting across the world. After spending years in CA, investing a lot of time and money in it, I was beggining to realize it wasn't something I really wanted to do for the rest of my life.
But now, it was a tedious task to let my parents know what I was thinking. I took the plunge and told them that I wanted to leave CA and pursue writing as a career. As obvious, they were furious and directed me to first finish my education, and I had to oblige. For almost two years I tried to study and clear my CA Final exams but wasn't able to.
Then came a turning point in my life. After repeated failures, growing frustration and rising depression, I finally took a bold stand and declared I was leaving CA once and for all. It resulted in chaos and havoc where I was criticized, scolded, being laughed upon for taking such a big decision by complete society. But nothing moved me. In 2017, I began the work on my first novel, "The Unending Maze", but it was easier said than done. Writing a novel is anythng but easy, that too without any experience or guidance. However, I did it all myself. I also started working as a freelance writer to earn some money. It was a drastic step to change your career at the age of 24. In September 2018, I got my first book published which was a success as a new comer.
Five years from that point, today in 2022 I have authored many books, both in traditional and self publishing, with hundreds of reviews and thousands of downloads of books, a job in a publishing company, many interviews and colomns in newspapers, finished more than hundreds of freelancing projects, having thousands of followers and millions of views on social media, and yes, making a decent amount of money from it, all at the age of 28. My nephew told me this morning, "You know you're famous on Amazon? Even alexa knows you."
This book, these series of articles is an effort to make your wriing journey easy. What I've gone through, what I've learnt. We'll cover all the topics imaginable in a writing career, imagining a book's story, researching, writing, editing, publishing, promotion, social media marketing, freelancing, jobs in writing and a lot more.
This is my journey, and I am here to share what I've learned with you.
