We don’t know of too many
entrepreneurs who started writing fiction! Is this a strange thing?
I would like to believe I’m still an entrepreneur. My internet
marketing company is still my main revenue source and we’re still making
softwares and marketing courses that people love. While many entrepreneurs turn
to writing, most of them publish non-fiction books. Mostly portraying what they
learnt while starting and running their companies. But I’m pretty sure there
must be a good chunk of fiction writers who are entrepreneurs. If not, I’ll
just take pride in being part of a small insignificant group.
Was it a childhood dream to become a
writer? Why fiction and not non-fiction?
Not really. When I first created my dream board, publishing a
novel was one of my goals. I hadn’t given it much thought until then. I have
written several non-fiction aka marketing related documents. A couple of ebooks
and a lot of training material. But that was all business. When She Smiled is a
product of passion. I wanted to tell a story about a simple guy dealing with
simple teen(y) issues. After reading JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, I
decided to write a little fiction book myself, and all it took was a couple of
months of focus to finish the first draft.
Did you ever have any doubts in your
writing abilities?
I don’t think anybody will ever tell you they are good enough.
Not even the bestselling authors. Why? Because we are all learning. We all keep
writing and improving ourselves. No one expects you to write like Hemingway in
the first go. You read, write, learn, improvise, write some more, re-write,
learn, write, and the process goes on. I learnt a lot from my research on how
to write, which softwares to use, and the best methods of plot development. In
the end, I just sat down and started typing. That’s all that matters. I know
there’s a very small chance that this book will be a hit. I’m not expecting it
to make me any money. I wrote it out of passion and that’s priceless.
How did you manage your time? How
did you stay disciplined? What would be your advice to new writers on this
aspect?
You’re absolutely correct. The most critical part is the initial
stage when you have to write a basic plot summary, scene by scene description,
and character sketches. Once you’ve done that, the writing part becomes easy.
But notthat easy. First
off, before even considering writing a novel, you have to promise yourself that
you will see it to the end. Next, you have to completely focus and drown out
all the background noise. As in, other people’s opinions, social media, self
doubt, and expectations. Once you’ve done that, then start writing. And don’t
stop. Even if you have writer’s block, you have to keep going. It doesn’t have
to be in chronological order. You can write the ending first, then the
beginning, and then the middle. You can divide the story into 50 scenes and
make sure you write one scene a day. Eventually its all about time and word
count. Let’s say you take one hour to write 1000 words and your novel will be
approximately 60,000 words. Even if you write only three hours a day, you’ll
have the first draft finished in under three weeks. How many hours, days, and
weeks we waste in our lives on mundane activities that have no conceivable
impact on our lives, ambitions, and dreams? It’s time to start accounting for
every day of your life and make a point to do something every day that takes you closer to your
goals.
Did you create a book proposal? Can
you share it? How can one go about developing a book proposal?
I did create a book proposal while contacting the literary
agents. While it still needs to be improved because publishers need a much
longer proposal, I’ll share the initial synopsis that I had written for When
She Smiled.Mrityunjoy Roy is a
fifteen year old Bengali who has spent the last ten years of his life growing
up in Shimla. While his family is completely academically oriented, he wants
something more. Finally he meets Akanksha in school, who turns his world upside
down with her gorgeous looks and mind boggling smile. As fate would have it,
she joins his tuition, and thus begins the torrid year of puppy love, romance,
heartbreak, tragedy, and self discovery. Set among the scenic Shivalik hills of
Shimla when mobile phones and internet were non-existent, this is a story of
how an average young teenager comes to terms with his destiny. First
time authors should create a proposal AFTER they have written their novel,
because publishers and agents also need the manuscript along with the proposal.
If a writer has been published before, they can simply write a plot summary and
character description and submit it to the publishers even before writing the
first draft. Publishers take a lot of time to go through proposals. A lot.
How did you decide the title and
cover page?
I wrote the entire novel untitled. The first draft document
stored in my laptop still has the filename: book.docx After writing the novel,
it became more and more apparent that the title had to do something with the
girl Mrityunjoy falls in love with. He was obsessed about her smile. He adored
those twitching muscles that made her lips wide and jaw stretch. I wrote down
ten possible title variations, surveyed my friends and family, and one title
stood out. That was: When She Smiled Being a graphic designer, I wanted to
design the cover myself. The story is set in Shimla, and that setting had a
very important role to play, so there had to be mountains. And of course, we
had to have a girl on the cover. The cover shows twilight in the horizon and it
gets darker as you come closer to the girl’s face. It has an apparent hidden
meaning. The gradual increase of color and shadow intensity also symbolises
Mrityunjoy’s journey as he comes to terms with his destiny.
Did you have any mentors who advised
on the technical side of your writing.Were there people around you who inspired
you to write?
Writing this book was a choice I made purely on instinct and
passion. I knew I had a story to write, and I knew I could take out time from
my schedule to write it. So I did. I didn’t have any mentors per say, but being
an avid researcher, I read a lot about different strategies that different
authors used to write their books. I decided on my own strategy based on my
routine and lifestyle, and ran with it.
How did you discover your writing
style? How will you describe your own writing style?
I discovered mine while writing my blog posts, company
communications, and marketing material. I tend to write words that can be
easily understood. Most of my lines are short and to the point. Sometimes even
a single word if appropriate. Punchy. I rarely use heavy words since my
vocabulary is mediocre at best. But my writing style is something that the
young generation can connect with.
How do you come up with an entire
plot? Did you know all the twists and turns right at the beginning? Or did you
discover them along the way?
When the idea first came to my mind, I had a pebble. I only knew
the beginning and the ending. Slowly, as more thought and words came into
existence, I ended up with a boulder. Now that I look back at the manuscript,
its more or less the size of a small hill. A lot of character development, most
of the dialogue, scene details and description — they were all done as I kept
writing. But the core idea remained unchanged.
What is romance? What is love? How
many times have you fallen in love?
That’s quite a difficult question to answer. Without being all
sappy, and by twitching my logic nerve, let me try to summarise love. Love is
an unexplainable feeling of attachment towards a person/object. Romance is an
action that sparks and/or enhances the feeling of love towards the said
person/object. I have fallen in love quite a few times. Without giving any
specifics away, the exact number is more than one but less than hundred.
Tell us a bit about your protagonist
Mrityunjoy that even those who read the book don’t know. Will you write about
him in other books as well?
Mrityunjoy is your average high school teenager. Academically,
he’s been drilled by his parents to study long and hard. Emotionally, he’s a
fool. He used to be the guy bullies picked on, but then he went to an Army
school, and came out stronger and more confident. When She Smiled is
Mrityunjoy’s POV story over the course of a year when he rejoins his school
post the Army School experience. The book goes deep into the psyche of that
teenage kid as he helplessly falls in love, experiences both utopia and
confusion, makes and loses friends, and deals with his family. I believe he’s a
character every guy can relate to. I was initially planning on including
Mrityunjoy in my next novel, but the plot is in a completely different genre.
He might have a cameo though.
Are you planning to write another
book? What will this be about?
I visualised the plot for my next novel about three days ago. Lying
in bed, I didn’t get any sleep that night because a story kept coming to me
piece by piece. By the time it was morning, I knew the plot was engaging and
interesting enough to work on. I got up from bed, fired up the laptop, and
wrote down everything I could remember. By afternoon, I had written down
one-liner descriptions of all the scenes. It’s a mystery thriller and I’m
really excited to see what will become of it. A similar thing happened with my
current novel as well. I couldn’t sleep so I took audio notes narrating the
basic plot. And now, we have a novel ready. I believe we all keep getting fancy
ideas time and again. It’s best to keep writing them down because they might
come in handy in the future.
