Adventures of a Writer

“Writing is a lonely art. You tend to sit on your own in a room without a whole lot of feedback, and frankly, your mother’s feedback, your dad’s feedback is not really what you want because they love and adore you. You actually want to read the tough feedback from professional readers or from the agents or managers that you submit your material to in your great quest to get representation.” – Peter Samuelson, screenwriter. Contests are a great way to get feedback that every writer needs—to understand what is working in the script and what’s not. I chose to enter my drama screenplay, Coaching Class in the Finish Line Competition in 2016 because they promised to give me feedback for my script. What’s more, based on the evaluation, I could re-submit a revised draft. This enabled me to improve my script taking it to the top of the contest table and winning a first runner-up place.  While a contest win can be a great ego boost, it actually is much more than that. It e...

Finding the right title for your book is crucial. An inspired title can create the right buzz for the book and help it along in its journey towards success. Today, I have on my blog Debeshi Gooptu Bakshi. She is a former journalist turned author who lives and works in Gurgaon. Debeshi's book which was published by Juggernaut Books in January 2017 goes by the intriguing and creative title of Dragon Aunty Returns In this post, Debeshi talks about how you can ensure you have a title that is unique and memorable... Do not judge a book by its cover. Isn’t this a proverb all of us have grown up hearing and believing? Ironically though, proverb aside, books tend to be judged by their titles and covers. People do it all the time. How many times have you walked into a bookstore and been wowed by a fantastic title and cover of a book whose author you knew nothing about? I’m guessing – quite often! Despite what life tells you, the cover and title of a book...

This Weekend has been a particularly busy one for two of my #MyNoWriMo author buddies, Saiswaroopa Iyer and Sudesna Ghosh. A book release is no mean feat. Writers, who prefer to be left alone to create beautiful tales, have to come out of their writing dens and market their precious creations. Believe me, marketing can take the mickey out of the best of writers! While Sai's book Avishi is set in Ancient India and tells the story of a warrior queen, Sue's is a modern romance set in Singapore and is titled My Singapore Fling . Intrigued, aren't you? Well, I will let Sai and Sue introduce their books to you and what prompted them to write these stories... Over to... Saiswaroopa Iyer:  Avishi is the reimagined rendition of Rig Vedic legend of Vishapala, the female warrior with a prosthetic leg. It felt wonderful to work on a relatively unknown character from the ancient lore as opposed to retell the same stories (Nothing against retellings here!). The readers can ...