One fine day, he chose to bare his story of love and loss to the world. While a lot of readers found a strong connect in the tender emotions of a tragic play of fate in his life told in an easy conversational style, it led Ravinder Singh — then associated with an IT major — to discover an author in him. Ever since the book “I Too Have A Love Story”, Singh has not looked back. Just recently, he has published his fourth novel, “Your Dreams Are Mine Now.”
It is interesting though when Chandigarh-based Singh says he didn’t finish reading a single book before he chose to write his first book. “Millions of people loved that book and millions are reading it even now. I write in a way I converse. I think that’s why people connect with my writing so much,” he states in an e-mail interview.
By now, his novels have created a fan base for him establishing him as a writer of romantic novels. Singh accepts this classification of him but points out that his third novel, “Like It Happened Yesterday”, wasn’t a love story. “The subject of that book was nostalgia — the golden childhood period that people in my age group spent in the 1980s-90s. However, in this world of storytelling of course, I am seen as an author who writes on love and romance,” he says.
Real subjects attract him but he can’t think of dishing out a non-fiction. “I rather transform non-fiction stuff into fiction,” he states. Something that he has done with “Your Dreams Are Mine Now”, which is inspired by the December 16 gang rape. Notes the popular author, “I was moved by the revolution that began in the aftermath of the infamous December 16 Delhi gang rape. In spite of such an unprecedented mass protest, it appears the circumstances haven’t changed. We need to see the impact of it. I wanted to keep this revolution alive in my own way and thought to write a story that begins with this real life revolution and goes into a fictional flashback. My readers who have read the book have been telling me that when they finished reading it, they weren’t just emotional but also felt the anger within them.”
Talking about the method of writing he usually follows, Singh says it is the plot that he thinks up first while writing a novel. Then come the protagonists and other main characters. “Once the skeleton of the story is ready, at times I allow the story to flow and at times I am left amazed to see how the story discovers its own flow. Broadly, the emotions that I want to depict in my stories at various junctures remain the same, but the way I do it, at times changes.” Though he prefers to write in the morning hours along with a cup of tea, it is during vacations amidst nature that he finds his true inspiration. “Water bodies, tall trees fuel the writing abilities in me,” he says.
A full-time writer who also runs Black Ink that publishes only first time author, Singh says he hasn’t picked up the pen yet to move on to his next. “I have been running a programme called ‘The 3 interesting storytellers’. I am more keen on launching three debut authors from my publishing venture.” Well, way to go!
