My Debut Novel - Part 1

Don’t you think my writing frequency has considerably reduced? Poor little blogging lady! She has just lost it but doesn’t want to admit it to even herself. Why else is she often drawing her writings from her past memories? How long is she going to last on her blogspot? If that is what you think about me, hold on alright. During my previous hiatuses, I always came up with enough excuses to justify the intervals between my posts. This time, I am here with proud proof. I have just completed writing my debut novel.


Writing has been my interest even before I knew what interest and passion is all about. As a school kid, I took pleasure is seeing my published poems in school magazine or a regional children magazine. At twelve years of age, I had been a die-hard fan of Enid Blyton and Nancy Drews . My friend and I used to sit together and pour our heads over a school-based children story that we so earnestly wrote in our ruled notebook. We thought we were going to publish it then! Ha! You should realize how serious we had been when I say that we picked out names of strange countries from the Atlas to use it as surnames for our characters. Alicia Chopra, Neha Belgium and names like that somehow made our characters seem more sophisticated. That is what we thought. It’s a pity that our childhood dreams couldn’t make it past our childhood.


After my previous post on College Confessions, you know how my college life had been. One thing that I cherished and still do about that life was my editorial work for the college magazine. Stressful through it was, I thoroughly enjoyed working on it. Thereafter, with limited opportunities and at life’s crossroads, I resorted to my diary writing alone until I stumbled upon the concept of blogging seven years ago. Since then, I’ve been bragging and rolling on this little cyber space that I call my own, my Archu’s Archive.


My Goodness! I am drifting back to flashback, the very thing I thought I should resist in this post. Anyways, now that I have started, a little more couldn’t hurt. My husband, Vijay, is aware of my passion towards writing from the time we were just friends. He kept motivating me to pursue my girlhood dream of seeing my first full-length novel published. As tempting though it sounds, I was lazy to implement it. I did make an effort during my pregnant days to spend the idle time on creative writing. That came to a halt with the arrival of my little son. Office work, responsibilities at home, mommy duties and occasional blogging made me drag and drag my novel that I could complete not more than seven chapters in two years.


One month ago, I was stressed out fully with my project work at office and desperately wanted a break from the routine. Not an idle time but devoted time to do something that I always wanted to do. From nowhere came this flash of idea to take a sabbatical from office to complete my book. I was glad that Vijay was as thrilled as I was when I told him my plans. I don’t expect to make a national best seller or a Chetan Bhagat mega hit. All I want is one published copy of my own book, written the way I wanted it to be, to sit on my book shelf as a reminder of my dream accomplished.


I am sincerely thankful to my office folks for granting me that much needed sabbatical this month. My debut book would not have been possible without that dedicated time. When I couldn’t do more than seven chapters in two years, I’ve completed the remaining twenty three chapters in the last one month. A minimum of one chapter a day was my self-imposed compulsory deadline. The reason I wasn’t writing in my blog was because I was writing in my book.


Now that the book is complete from an author’s side, I am forced to wear a market analyst’s hat. I am talking to publishers and am doing everything possible to make my book sit on the shelves of Crosswords, Landmark and Flipkart. Alright, I just wanted one copy on my shelf when I started but after one month investment of time and effort, I think it’s only fair to expect returns. If not much, at least to make up for the one month’s salary that I had to forgo during my break.


That is exactly why I am here writing this post, to advertise and plead as shamelessly as the other commercials that you see around all the time. I am not sure when will my book see the stalls as the process has just begun. If no one is ready to publish my book, I am taking a self-publishing approach for sure. Since I’ve ventured this far, why not see it till the end? At this point of time, I cannot tell you what the book is all about except that it is a fiction novel. I will reveal the required information when it is time. Yet, I am here asking you a favour in spite of that.


I am counting on my blog readers to buy a copy of my book. If it isn’t too much to ask, a little publicity perhaps with the assurance that my book will be reasonably priced. Judging by my blog for all these years, kindly let me know through your comments whether you would be interested in buying my book, if and when it makes it there. For all you know, your comments on this blog page as against the ones in private mails or Facebook might catch the eye of a potential publisher who might in turn take interest in making my dream a reality. Even otherwise, I’ll have an assessment of the sales potential of my book. All these years, I had been blogging only for passion, with no real monetary returns. Now that I am trying to dare my next bold step, can I count on you?