The Challenges I Faced While Writing My Debut Novel
Hello, beautiful people. Hope y’all had a fantastic Christmas and are enjoying your holidays. The same is the case with me too — I had a lovely Christmas with my family and am having a great time with time during my holidays too. Probably, I am a bit happier as a renowned book critic reviewed and interviewed me about my work.
Even though this isn’t the first time that I was interviewed, this was indeed my debut interview when someone asked about my novel. Although in my book “The Chronicles of Mumbai” I do mention stuff about philosophy and stoicism, I have to be honest that the publishing of the interview did feel good. And I mean, it’s meant to be, right?
Okay, now coming back to the actual part of the blog — what were the challenges that I encountered while writing my book. Surely, I’ll reveal that, but before I get to that, let me declare that I don’t intend to scare y’all and I’ll tell you why. Because, out of those billions of people in the universe that let their dreams go astray, you’re the one that has chosen to fight for your dreams and taken the bold step of writing your novel. Seriously, I mean look around yourself, how many people do you think have done that? So, chin up and get yourself to believe that you are awesome and are doing an amazing job already.
Having that said, we have to understand that challenges are very much a part and parcel of almost everything that we undertake, and here you are attempting to write an entire novel — so how can you expect your masterpiece sans challenges? My case was no different, every moment there were obstacles in my way and there were times when I didn’t even know how to react, and I began doubting myself too. But, then again there was this silver lining and my knight in shining armor.
Do you know who that was? Myself. Yes, in this case the knight was a woman that rescued herself from her own self doubt. Fortunately, for me very early on in my process I came to the realisation that the challenges, resistance and setbacks that we receive from outside or external sources are much later, and that it’s our mind that reacts adversely to situations that’s beyond our control.
As I did mention in the beginning that I had gone through various stages of self doubt and there was no motivation around me at all. It was at this point that I decided to let go of all the apprehensions and decided to go easy on myself, not with my work, but with the whole process of writing, and I saw that gradually I was able to get hold of myself and I was able to operate from a position of power.
So, I’d say that the challenges of writing the novel while in the process were more from inside, than outside and when you actually understand that there’ll be no difficulty to cope up/deal with the challenges outside.
Now, while we are writing a book, what should we focus on and how do we deal with the challenges?
. Understand that challenges are natural, and once you can overcome them, you emerge stronger
- Don’t overthink
- If you genuinely feel that your work needs improvement, go for it, else don’t bog yourself down
- Learn to self assess, but only with your work, and not someone else’s
I hope these pointers could be of some help to y’all and I wish you the best for your writing journey. If you have written a book already, please share it with me, would love to read it.
