How #BlogchatterWritFest is helping me in my third ebook.

Before starting 30 Legends And A 90s Kid (my third ebook), I wrote two ebooks in the last two years. I was completely naive while writing my first book. Thus, it didn’t get a good response. As a beginner, my target was to sell 100 copies but it remained unsold for the first three to four months. While publishing the second ebook, I had experience of the first one. Thus, I didn’t repeat those mistakes again and as a result, I got a good start as well as the good response on my second ebook. Now, I am writing my third ebook with the experience of two books. Apart from that experience, I am more prepared this year, thanks to #BlogchatterWritFest.

This year, Blogchatter conducted 9 sessions in #BlogchatterWritFest and from each session, I learnt some or the other thing.

First Session

First session was by Aditya on Twitter on non-fiction writing. My first book was fiction but my second book was non-fiction and third one too is non-fiction. From that session, I learnt about fact-finding and how to use the internet for research and to find the correct information.

Second Session

Second session was on the importance of self editing. I have done the editing of both the books I wrote before this one and I was glad to know that I did all the basic things mentioned by Samarpita. I, myself read the manuscript, run the spell check and checked the capital letter error. Apart from self-editing, beta reading also I did as mentioned by Samarpita. Thus, from second session, I learnt that I am doing most of the things correctly as an editor, I just need to take care of one or two things of which I was unaware.

Second session of #BlogchatterWritFest defined my role as an editor and gave me the book (Plot Whisperer) which will help me as an editor after writing the first draft of my third book.

Third Session

In the third session by Dipankar Mukherjee, I came to know about two types of storytelling. One, character-driven and second, plot-driven. As he mentioned, I use my experiences in my stories, I give my touch to them but I never thought of an idea from the point of view of a character or structure of the plot. Moreover, I liked his analogy of water in a glass with experiencing and using them in stories.

Fourth Session

Fourth session was on writing mythology by Anand Neelkantan. Out of that session, I learnt that to write mythology, you need intensive reading on that subject. Though mythology is not my cup of coffee, fourth session made me realise that one needs intense knowledge of Indian mythology and its characters to write a good mythological novel.

Fifth Session

Fifth Session also gave me confidence because before starting any fiction novel, I note down the characters first. And let the characters develop naturally in the story. And this is the exact thing Chitra mentioned in her session on creating memorable characters. One more thing I learnt in that session and that is a different process for creating characters for different genres.

Sixth Session

Poetry has never come to me naturally. Rhythm and rhymes have never ever been part of me. Thus, I understood only a couple of things in this session. One, I already mentioned and the other thing is the usage of language in poetry. Like, the usage of Hindi words in English poetry and vice-versa. It was the most important point of the session and Posham Pa elaborated it in Hindi to convey the message.

Seventh Session

I have never faced the rejection because I haven’t approached any publisher yet. Before this session, I had only heard about the tantrums of publishers but this session gave me the actual picture. Kachana’s story is very interesting. Her second book was rejected by the publisher who published her first book happily. Thank God, I decided to publish my books on kindle but her story and her guidance will stay with me whenever I approach publisher in the future.

Eighth Session

Kiran Manral’s session regarding marketing the book on social media was very insightful. I have promoted both the books on social media but I didn’t know the different roles of different platforms in the promotion of a book. Kiran Manral elaborated the roles of different platforms and taught me how to use them. Along with that, her point of being shameless (when it comes to talking about your work) hit me and made me realise that being quiet at events won’t work anymore.

Ninth Session

The launch of Saumik Pal’s debut novel made go like “what? Is this genre for real?” He introduced me to a completely new genre. I am not a fan of using photographs in the book but Saumik Pal’s launch of a visual saga left me in amusement. I am yet to read his book but I wish him all the luck for his very interesting and path-breaking book.

In this way, #BlogchatterWritFest has prepared me for my third book. I just hope that I use all the learnings while launching my third ebook ’30 Legends And A 90s Kid.’