When one has a lot views and news to share what do we do? Tell our friends. And in the era of social network sharing has become all the more easy and viable. But what do we do when there is more to share ‘than discovering the best place to shop’ or ‘voicing our opinion on the newly announced five-year imprisonment for calling names to people from the north-east? Write a book. Now authors are a plenty and from different walks of life.
Personal experiences can go beyond a paragraph, page or several pages, “that’s why I decided to get published. I write because I know I have a story to narrate and an interesting one at that. Writing is not just about putting your thought the way you like it. The thoughts when put in words should make readers draw a picture with every word,” says debutante author Sangeeta Bahadur. Sangeeta recently released her first book from a trilogy series. Named Jaal-Kaal1, the book, according to her tells a story of a new world altogether.
The list of debut authors is getting longer but how much is really read? “Some books are real trashy with the language and the story narration, whereas some make you smile and relate to circumstances or situation we might have faced on our day-to-day lives,” says Vivek Nair, a financial analyst. “But as long as I am not paying a heavy price, I might not complain much,” he adds.
Remember Kavya Vishwanathan? The girl who wrote How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. The girl shot to limelight for being one of the youngest girls to have written a book. She made to the cover pages of all literary supplements of newspapers but her fame was shrouded by alleged rumours of plagiarism.
Manish Purohit, CEO of Popular Praskasn publishing house says, “Fifty five percent of India’s population is below the age of 25. And when a youngster is writing, the connect is better. Besides, Chetan Bhagat triggered the hope that there is way to be heard by all. Publishers are always looking for new stories with a great style of narration. This could be one reason why youngsters from varying fields are turning authors. But at the same time the author’s background is important to draw a sense of perspective about the kind of writing he will do.”
According to Manish, publishing a first-time author works in various ways. The most important being that the publicity is mutual. While Manish says so, debutant author Anirudh Annam, author of Children of war begs to differ, “It isn’t really a cakewalk for debutant authors. Publishing houses are not to be blamed for this. Each day they get more samples then they can read. In this process, sometimes good works are lost. I wrote because I was highly inspired by the work of professional writers and I had a lot of creativity which I knew I could share with others.”
Comedian turned author Sorabh Pant recently released A Wednesday Soul and he says it is purely for the love of reading and the inspiration which he drew from other authors. “You love reading, in general. And, then you pick up some book that sort of changes your perception on what is a novel. For me and a host of others that book was Hitchiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. I'm utterly obsessed with that pseudo-trilogy. Then, I read a lot of fantasy — Jonathan Stroud, Phillip Pulman, George Martin, Robert Jordan etc. Samit Basu also published in a similar genre and his book did fabulously well. It was awesome fun. I realised that this was an option since I love writing. Besides being a comedian, writing a novel is the only time I felt more alive than anything on Earth.”
This article has been corrected for a factual error wherein Mr Samit Basu was wrongly quoted. The error is regretted.
