Penultimate stop on my writer's journey

Having just won the 2015 Annual Debut Novel Competition with Cinnamon Press and bagging a promise of publication in early 2017, I feel elated but mostly relieved at having nearly reached my final stop. 'Under The Pipal Tree' is going to be out there! A scary thought - I feel as if I'm suspended at the top of a ride looking down - my heart, simultaneously thumping with excitement and plummeting with fear.

http://www.cinnamonpress.com/index.php/blog/entry/2015-annual-debut-novel-novella-prize/


It has been an incerdibly long journey but I wouldn't have done it any other way. No short cuts for me. I needed to learn the hard way. Years of practising my craft, on my own, trying to find my voice has not been a waste of time. For some, ten to fiteen years seem too long to achieve their dreams. Imagine this as your Mona Lisa, would you print and sell your first tentative sketches or wait for that magic moment when despite bucket loads of self-doubt you think 'that's not too bad'? I am not the sort of person who is filled with confidence about my art. I need someone else to read my work and validate it. Jan Fortune at Cinnamon Press once told me that those writers who feel they've got there never do but the ones who doubt themselves are the ones who eventually get there.

Perhaps doubting oneself is good. It leaves you open to learning, perfecting, tweaking and lots and lots of rewrites.

I know a daunting year of working with an editor to polish my manuscript lies ahead, but for the moment it feels good to have my dream realised, to be picked as a winner, for someone else to think the novel has been worth the wait.

Next stop. Publication.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yeovil Literary Festival – A Writer’s Point of View.

Image
In 2014 the first raw draft of Under the Pipal Tree was shortlisted in the Yeovil International Literary Competition. Buoyed by this validation, I banished self-doubt and set to work on the novel. A year of intense revisions and six drafts later it won the Cinnamon Press Debut Novel of the Year 2015 and a publishing contract. When I informed Liz Pike, Yeovil Literary festival’s charming organiser, about my success, she remembered my story and invited me to talk about my novel at the Past Winners’ Event.  I felt privileged to talk about my writing journey from first draft to publication. The events kicked off with a literary dinner where the guest speaker was the lovable Christopher Biggins known fondly as Biggins. Unsurprisingly, he regaled us with his adventures. He has chronicled his life in his memoir, My Story. At the Past Winners' Event four writers were invited to read out extracts from their winning piece of work. The air was charged with creati
Read more

No Missed Call - A Halloween Special Teaser

Nirmala peered into the windows of Om Nama jewellers. Heavy gold necklaces, like the ones locked in a box in Bikash’s possession and saved up for a rainy day, were displayed with wanton, vulgar opulence. When would she wear one again? She was reminded of corpses of married women decked in red wedding sari prepared for their pyre. Her gold would not melt with her. They would line her husband’s purse. Once again, she felt the pang of a lost child. A daughter would have been the proud bearer of such finery. Then again, she could have been a tom boy and shunned such feminine trinkets. Then again… an ugly thought pierced her mind, ‘she’, the unborn, could have been violated after birth. If she was not allowed to survive in her womb, what chance would she have outside?
Read more

Under the Pipal Tree – How the story began

Most stories begin in childhood. They appear in our first drawings, our childish patter and crucially the make-believe world we weave when playing with dolls, paper airplanes or invisible friends. These are the beginnings of a creative project. As we grow up, life steers us in other practical directions until those first imaginative steps are erased from our consciousness. But if we take time to connect with our creative soul, that world can be recreated with simple tools: paper and pen. Writers are usually avid readers and it’s a great place to start. Books feed our imagination, teach us our craft, inspire and uplift. But some books take us further when the characters leap out of the pages and populate our world, hovering over us like invisible, benign spirits like Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Moliere’s Alceste. Some like Meursault in The Outsider can have a lasting effect on a young reader’s mind. When I first read the novel at the age of fourteen, the emotional detachment of this ch
Read more