My Dream Come True Moment

Yes, dreams do come true! All you need to do is to dare to dream, take efforts to fulfil it and hit the right opportunity. My dream of becoming an author has now come true and I want to pen my journey to immortalize it.

I was lucky that the habit of reading was instilled in me at a very young age. I remember how I engrossed myself in reading Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie. As I grew up I read Arthur Conan Doyle, O Henry, Sidney Sheldon, Rabindranath Tagore, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Rudyard Kipling and Shakespeare while still at school. My school library played an important role. Also, the books my parents had at home fascinated me and I am grateful to both. 

While doing my Honors in English Literature, I studied the works of Jane Austen and it was there that the thought of writing took birth. ‘I want to write a book someday,’ I scribbled in the last page of my notebook which came alive today, some twelve years later.

In these years, I did my post-graduation, grabbed a flourishing job in my dream company, married the love of my life and had two adorable kids. Then came a phase of my life where I was eventually cocooned at home, taking utmost care of my kids and spending the rest of the time in reading and playing my keyboard. Making the best use of solitude, by now I had already started writing. I wrote poems, stories and some parenting blogs which turned out well and I also won awards for it. It encouraged me further and I thought of writing a book on a serious note.

It is rightly said that when you truly wish for something, you get help from unexpected sources to fulfil it, and my source here was Twitter! I was new to it and started following some of my favourite authors and that is how I came across Blogchatter’s Ebook Carnival. Without wasting time, I immediately connected with them and registered for the carnival which was just a month away.

With a one-month-old baby in my arms, still recovering from my caesarian surgery, amidst a pile of diapers, sleepless nights, nursing blues, post-partum depression and with lots of people around, I couldn’t find a log to hold upon to fulfil my dream. At times I gave up completely because I would wait for my kids to fall asleep so that I could write. By the time I got that required pin-drop silence at home, I was too tired to look for my laptop.

Blogchatter, on the other hand, was highly encouraging, the session they arranged with established authors, their microblog sessions and facebook chats all motivated me to keep going. I then decided to first ditch the laptop and switch to my mobile for writing and second, write anytime and anywhere.

I wrote while I was feeding my baby, I wrote when I was awake at three in the morning, I wrote while waiting for my turn at the hospital, I wrote while eating, I was always scribbling something and eventually I ended up finishing the entire book in my mobile. To my surprise, I was ready with not just one but two books simultaneously.

Then came the difficult part of editing, designing covers, and formatting which was not possible in mobile. To add to my woes, we had to move to a different city at that very time. Till now an entire village helped me with my kids but now I was all alone. It was impossible to take out time for yourself, managing a toddler and a newborn. I still tried to work smart but my laptop crashed and so all my hopes too came crashing down. The only possibility to complete my book was now to work on my hubby’s office laptop. To test my patience, it was also his go-live month in office and he would return home not before midnight and sometimes as late as 2 a.m. So, on a weekend I hijacked his laptop for two days. He too helped me with the formatting, the last-minute hassles, we also fought while our ideas clashed and finally I hit the submit button!

Then came the big day of the book launch. Blogchatter made it a very special event for all of us and launched all the books of the carnival one after the other. I was impatiently waiting for my turn and was extremely proud to be part of the august group of authors. Blogchatter made it look like a cake walk, brought smiles to our faces and changed our lives forever.

May 22nd, 2018 at 2:30 p.m. I witnessed my cherished dream come true, I was now a published author.