Part B:
My first brush with literature happened when I was still in kindergarten. My father took me to a nearby bookstore and bought me that month's edition of Chandamama. The stories about kings and the moon and animals which could talk, thrilled me to no end. As I grew up, my fascination with literature only got stronger. At school we studied stories of O Henry and Khushwant Singh, and not only did I find myself getting lost in them, I would go back home and try to write continuations to those stories too.
In high school I took up essay writing and debating, and won national and regional competitions. But while my words were being praised by my teachers, I still couldn't find satisfaction since I felt like I was merely adding on to ideas but not creating new ones.
To make matters more bleak, my teachers and parents told me to focus on my studies solely and not waste time with extracurricular activities. After a while, I felt like I was fighting a lost battle so I gave up. I wrote very rarely and that too, in secret.
That finally changed in the first year of college, when encouraged by my friend, I sent in a two sentence story I had written to Terribly Tiny Tales. I couldn't have imagined the explosive power of words though, because before the week had passed, my tale had gone viral on social media and even been picked up by the Times Of India. Emboldened by this, I started writing more, and ended up collaborating with almost all big brands in India for content creation through Terribly Tiny Tales.
The next step for me was writing my own book. I worked on it for over a year and finally sent it to the publisher. A month later, they sent me an email telling me they had accepted my manuscript, which was when I finally came clean to my family about my writing, and to my surprise they were happy about my progress. My book came out in 2017, and listed on the Amazon Bestseller List upon release. Since then, I have written two more books which have also been bestsellers, and conducted creative writing workshops in various colleges and universities across India.
It really has been a dream come true for me, and it helped me believe, if you fight for your passion, you'll definitely win.