How To Write A Book

The Making Of

“Love Happens, So does a breakup..!!”

I know this sounds stupid. A book is not as gigantic as a movie but when you start writing one, you actually realize that it’s no less either. So here I am, writing this for you to know what all goes into writing a book and get it on the sales rack.

To be honest, I started writing because I had no one to lend an ear to my thoughts. I wrote about the moments that I wanted to remember all my life and about how I felt at those moments. It was while reading one such writing, under the influence, that it struck me. That this could turn big, that I could write a book out of it.

My first step was to make a story out of it with a conclusive ending. And then, I divided it into chapters. The decision of where to start from is a tough one. I chose to start from where it all started, the “boy met girl” types, though simple but always effective. The next step was to fill these chapters with relevant events while giving each chapter an ending which pushes the reader to read on. This can be viewed as making boundaries while painting and then filling it with colour. So to make it beautiful, I added all colours of emotions. Humour, though tough to create, is highly appreciated. And not to forget, what makes you cry is what touches your heart.

The ending is as important as the beginning. It may not always be happy, as in the Hindi movies but it should be conclusive. It should solve the purpose of the story unless you are planning a sequel. Now, once I finished writing, I wanted to add a prologue and an epilogue. While a prologue is something that sets up the story, creating a reason in reader’s mind of why is he/she reading the novel, an epilogue gives a smiling adieu to the reader.

The first script I wrote was on pages. I pledged to write atleast two pages each day but to add to my woes were all sorts of exams, assignments, internals, externals and all other shit. It was tough to take out time but when I loved something, I loved it to the core. I was all over the place with my card board, classroom, lab, metro, cafeteria, etc. It took me huge amount of time and atleast 200 ruled sheets.

Now I needed to transfer all the stuff onto a computer, so I typed every word of the script while vigorously editing it. Those days, I didn’t have a personal laptop, so I sat on a wooden chair all night, breaking my back after a 12 hour college schedule. Some respite came from the Nokia communicator that I borrowed from dad which gave me the option of typing anywhere-anytime.

Finally, some kind of a final script of 260 pages was ready. Now I needed someone to seriously review what I had written. I cashed in on friends who were eager to know what I had been up to for the last 10 months. There reviews helped me remove irrelevant parts and correct my mistakes. A final round of corrections from another friend whose language was stronger than Salman’s muscles made it READY.

If you are thinking that this is it, then you would be pleased to know that this is just the half job done. To send it to a publisher one first needs to make a manuscript which contains about the author, title of the book and a brief of the story. Yes, I had to mercilessly murder all my effort into a few lines but still keeping the essence. After many sleepless nights I managed something that I thought was good.

To know whom to send the manuscript to, I went to book shops to see who all were printing this genre and listed them out. There were a few who dominated the domain and where highly unreachable. I started mailing out manuscripts in groups of three. Rarely someone replied that they had received it and it will be studied. Some mail boxes were full and the mail returned and some were as unresponsive as a dead phone line.

After sending out 100’s of mails a few approvals did come to me. But some asked me to invest half of the amount which was unrealistic for me being a student. One asked me to completely change the last two chapters, which was also unacceptable to me. All this continued for months and I was fast losing hope. I had done the best I could. There was nothing more I felt I could do. One fine day, this offer from one of the oldest publishers came by me. They took months to review my work but finally said yes.

I asked my father for approval and he said “What did you write? Your history?”. I told him that it was fiction inspired by some events of my life, so pat came the reply “Tune to likha hoa ki mera baap KANS h”. I took it as a joke and it was a denial from him. Nonetheless, I said a Yes to the publishers.

Days later I received the agreement papers and signed them with utmost excitement. A month later, the book is ready for release and the excitement has turned into nervousness. I hope all my reader’s would like it. It’s not my story, it’s your’s.

p.s:- Dare to Dream...!!