I was looking through some of my posts and realised that I hadnt blogged about one of the biggest and most satisfying experiences of my life thus far. Its about the journey of getting my book published.
I think I have wanted to write ever since I was a little kid. I vividly remember having read the story of Robinson Crusoe in my 6th grade. The story inspired and enthralled me and I wrote a short story as a follow up. Word got around in the class that I had written a TWO PAGE story! Felt 'wow'. My English teacher was too busy to notice, however, on hearing some noise in the class about some kid having written a story, she asked me to show her my work. She rubbished it and that’s the last memory I have of that story.
I thought that this isn’t going to work and I so started writing poems. I remember writing a poem on our Independence Day when I was in the seventh grade. The poem got put up on the school notice board! Felt wow. I continued to write and sometimes it was about rather arbit stuff (one of my poems compared the life of a dog to that of a human and how the former was better than the latter)
This continued in school and later in college, when I’d write poems for some of my friends on their birthdays, etc. I’d also go on to write for Mansi- the love of my life. Along the way, I wrote time and again about life and also about dreams, solitude, fear and death among other bits.
Writing has always given me a dimension to express myself and has some times been therapeutic too. And often, when I begin to write, words seem to tumble out- whether its writing a paragraph or a poem, its great to let loose my mind on a piece of paper (or Microsoft Word!:))
Writing a book was a part of my bucket list and some time around the start of 2010 I decided to cross that item off the list. Mansi and I started to type all the poems and began sorting some stuff that felt too amateurish (it’s all relative!) and some that I wasn’t allowed to publish :)
I found a good self publishing firm in CinnamonTeal who helped me through getting it formatted, etc as well. Big shout out to my cousin, Mehak for doing the cover and some artwork inside the book along side Mansi. And after about a couple of months of dedicated hours- the book was published! Felt wow, again. Below is the book cover- isn’t it fab?!
Really pleased and proud of the effort Mehak and Mansi put in the book to see it through becoming a reality. One thing off my list!
PS: Please don’t ask about book sales- I have been asked this before and I have maintained it to be a “respectable” ‘double digit’ number :)
