OH YES, I will be an AUTHOR............

Amulya - Dude, She dumped me, I can’t live without her, don’t know what to do?

Arpit – Chill man! Invite her to a 5 star on a dinner and then propose her again.

Amulya- Nai yar, have done that twice already, it won’t work.

Arpit- hey IDEA!!!

Amulya – What?

Arpit- Write a Novel man! And then get it published, what say?

Amulya- Isn’t that hard? I mean, I haven’t read many books, but whatsoever I have read, the things they wrote were like teaching Neurology to a Computer scientist.

Arpit- Which world are you in yar? I am talking about NOVEL!!! Haven’t you seen those piles on our railway station and bookstores? The books with 200 pages, priced 100 to 125 with Red cover and a big heart over it?

Amulya- Oh Yes, I have read a few of them, they were nice, I could see myself as the guy who lost his girlfriend but in the end got her back due to some tricks, I read a lot of them in the last month from the day she isn’t picking up my call. But I doubt if my English is good enough to write a 200 page book, it would take many years to complete it.

Arpit- See it’s simple, all you have to do is write all that happened with you, add a few hindi songs to set the mood and especially for girls who will be reading your novel, they love it and who knows you might even get dozens of friend requests from girls way hotter than Alokita!

Amulya- Seems like a good idea, tell me some more.

Arpit- Listen carefully now,
1^st -It’s too easy to write a novel, it hardly takes 2-3 months if you write for 1 hour daily,
2^nd -Tough thing is to get published, but there are Indian publishers who publish it within 8-10 months from the day you submit them.
3^{rd -} thing ENGLISH does NOT matter, in fact the easier words you use, the popular will be your novel, who would like to read a story with having to consult the dictionary a dozen times, readers are not looking to improve their vocab by reading your novel!
4^th - add some one liners senti wale, forward msgs mein jo aate hai na hindi wale, ultimate spice to add emotional masala to your book, and the more emotional masala, the famous it is among girls and trust me 70-80% of the buyers of your novel will be girls, so be careful to NOT add anything against them to an extreme extent varna tu gaya.

5^th - add some love making scenes, full intense, with deepest of details, you would be surprised but that is what makes some of the crappiest novels a HUGE success, I guess even girls like it and rather girls like those scene and the descriptions more than the guys themselves.

6^{th -}ending should be pura bollywood style, with everyone against you but you are successful in getting her despite all the odds! Ya fir if you want more girls to sympathize and send you friend request, then make it a sad ending with her still dumping you and never coming back to you ;)
7^{th -} people don’t call it a fiction, they call it a real life story, so the more it looks like your own story the better it is for you, add some subtitle like a true story ya inspired from real life or something like that, fir dekhiyo kya sales hoti hai, AND yes, write an awesome back cover description, 300 words mein sab dal diyo sex, dating, movies, bunks and tadka to push them to go and buy it instantly, that is all, bas kal se shuru ho ja.

So the above was a fictitious ( ;) ) conversation between two friends, one has lost his girlfriend and other one suggesting him means to get her back and needless to say ‘writing a novel’ is a panacea in this.
Everyday I go to a bookstore (from the last 4 years), since right from class 5 I had been taught, that books are man’s best friend, they never leave you alone, they teach you, they guide you, they improve your ‘thought process’, they do everything to transform you from a layman to a mature, prudent, thoughtful, intellectual human being.
BUT

Everything out here, comes with a conditions apply and so goes for the above saying, the books that the adage was referring to might have been the ones like ‘Animal Farm- George Orwell’ or Short stories by Oscar Wilde, or ‘The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho’ but now we have books like ..... Sorry picking out names is unethical; one should NOT point out names in public (although authors have the right to do so in their so called ‘BOOKS’)

I was in 11^th class and Organic Chemistry was being taught at my tuition centre, I was confused and dejected as always when the guy behind me tapped me on my back, and gave me this book (after he had finished reading it) with white cover and a figure of a guy with some typical signs around him, I turned it around and read the 200 words that was a story of an IIT Delhi guy who is having a tough time in studies and is unable to handle the dwindling grades after he falls in love with a professor’s daughter. This was awesome; never thought books could be this fun! I started it and soon enough I was left alone when the whole batch had moved out after the class had come to an end, this was it, that night was spent in dreaming myself in IIT Delhi, with stealing next exam’s question paper with the help of my girlfriend the professor’s daughter, life was awesome, I was reading a book and enjoying it. The next book the same guy lent me was ‘Jonathan Livingstone seagull- Richard Batch’ and trust me -what a crap! There is a bird who learns to fly and then goes higher and higher and one day learns to teleport, and reach anywhere with a mere thought to get there. What a trash it was, not at all interesting and on top of that totally unbelievable; I cursed the guy for a week to have my 6 hours wasted. Then the next week he explained me there are various types of novels, the one that I read first was an Indian Writer writing a college story while the 2^nd one is an America based Classic writer, whose works are not in terms of college love story or anything near that, then he said both are good, I will bring you whatever you like, abruptly I said ‘Of course Indian, I am a LOYAL Citizen of INDIA (lol)’ I was 16 and I was prone and susceptible to love, girls were all around and I was single but for the first time in my life, I felt like getting a girlfriend and I fulfilled my need by delving into those sugar coated honey pages which got me a girlfriend for 6 hours every week, I travelled through the crests and troughs of the guy and made love to the girl just like he did (delete this line and if it is still there, Don’t read it :P ). So that way my 11^th and 12^th passed by the guy upon whom all his teachers gambled upon that he will crack IIT, landed up getting 51,000 AIR in AIEEE, thanks to Mr. Chetan Bhagat, Tushar Raheja and likes (khud to IIT kar gaye, meri lagvadi :D ). I fell in love and had my heart broken, once again these novels came to my rescue and I dipped myself into them like a diehard alcoholic. Then one day, the girl I had a crush upon, suggested me to read ‘Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho’ and I did, how could I not, that day I realized, how terrible my English was and also, there is much more to life than having a girlfriend and hanging out with her. I compared the 2 types and from thereon started saving money to buy the 300 Rupee literature that Harper Collins, Penguin had to offer, for the expensive ones I downloaded a pirated version and got them printed at my University’s economic shop. Now here I am being very selective about the Indian books I read, like Novoneel Chakraborty and a few more rare authors who write not to share their stories but to play the role of a writer, to send a message to the society, to bear the writer’s responsibility of changing the world, to promote fidelity in relationships than boozing or drugs or sleeping around if the partner stays ignorant.

Now 90% of the novelists that have mushroomed, everyone wants to be the next Chetan Bhagat, but it’s not necessary that all of them have them same stars and skills as him. The average successful authors ruling the arena, have the flair but they are either too careless to write sense, while some are floating in their own delusional world where they believe that whatever they write is PURE GOLD and all the critics are JEALOUS of them and that is why they trash their stories, they haven’t faced the struggle to get published or didn’t have to invest thousands to promote their novels that is why they don’t know the value of getting published and getting famous thereafter.

The problems are too many to be listed, but needless to say, the prime is the dearth of topics the youth today wants to think upon, they are ready to join the league, but no one wants to initiate his own niche. Some are self obsessed about their economic status that they don’t even spare their novels out of it for example ‘I revolved the NIKE tumbler while playing the game of truth and dare’
and I was wondering if the writer got some endorsement from the company to mention it’s name in his novel which would eventually sell at least a few TEN THOUSANDs. Everyone is in a hurry to earn fame, be the Hero of their respective colleges by standing out of the crowd after all, on an average there is only a single published author from a college. Some want to earn million by getting their stories out so they opt for the safe side by mimicking those who have mastered the art of sensual descriptions in their novels. While some as in the conversation want to get back their girlfriend by getting their past published as a novel and as a matter of fact, I had read a novel by a NOW renowned writer who had explicitly mentioned that the sole purpose of writing this novel was to get back her girl by gifting the novel to her birthday and in the novel, it did the trick which thereby inspired another dozen of his followers to do the same to restore their love life.

Literature, that is not, what we read today is more of a SALMAN KHAN movie with sex scene being the ITEM NUMBERS, we know they are irrelevant but they are a trend and a safe bet to make the book a hit. What will happen in the future no one knows, but as of Now, it is a pity to read and as a result there is a huge slump in the Indian Publishing industry for the past 6-7 months and those who blame RUPA/Penguin for NOT entertaining first time authors fail to notice that they do give you a chance provided you writing style is at least above average and the concept of your novel is NOT another rom-com like THE INELIGIBLE BACHELORS by RUCHITA MISRA was NOT only accepted by RUPA but also promoted extensively by them to make it a National Bestseller within a month of its release, A point worth noting, the NOVEL does NOT have a single Love making scene and nor was the narration too philosophical yet it was a widely appreciated one JUST and JUST because it was NOT run of the mill writing style and had its moments of laughter and cries in RIGHT proportions.

SUM & SUBSTANCE is- Develop your own writing style, don’t copy famous authors just for the sake of it, they are successful coz of their fan following + their writing style which is no longer the same as their first novel AND try to think different, grow beyond your own college/school/office story, it would usually be More rewarding than what you are currently thinking to write.

Oh yes something about the author

I am Nikhil Mukhija, my first novel ‘You & Me & Our Relationship’ is a NON FICTION book upon Psychology of attraction, and so far it is getting a tremendous response from all those who read it and recommended it to their friends, hope you would like it too & Don’t punish me for my occasional harsh wordings above.


PS : This is a guest article on the blog of The Adroits and thus all the opinions and expressions quoted are solely of the author's.