My interview by Rachel Poli!

Due to some issue, technical probably, I couldn’t reblog the original post from Rachel‘s blog, who is the interviewer.

A big thanks to Rachel, who considered posting my interview on her blog. 🙂 I have gone through bit of other interviews too on her blog, and on comparing the length of my answers to others’, I was pretty sure that Rachel would ask me to shorten their length. But she didn’t so thanks for that too, Rachel. 😀
This being my first one (a big deal), I was excited about it getting published here, on WordPress. Also, this interview is bit candid too, I guess. 😉

And yeah, this really is an actual interview unlike A Plainspoken Interview of My life. If you have gone through it, you must know what I mean. 😉

Here, the original post goes,

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It’s my pleasure to welcome Aditi Sharma to my blog!

Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

If only I could tell about the books I write. Right now I can only tell about the books that I read written by others.
Anyhow, as this question is about me I would suffice its answers with a few adjectives and phrases about me as a person-
A loner by choice; dog-person; peace lover; morning and green-tea person; planner; moody (big time, and trying to get it removed from this list); simplicity-believer; stories over poems; inclined more towards mountains than beaches; stationery lover.

A quote I firmly believe in and always keep by my side-
“There is no short cut to success and there is no everlasting success achieved through short cuts.” 

How long have you been writing for?

If copying quotes, stories, and small messages in my diary can be considered writing then I had been doing that since I was a kid of around 12 (maybe). But if something serious, something new, something original is concerned, that I have started writing only in my late teens. I started when I was 19, but after a long break of two-three years (due to graduation, which by the way is in Engineering) I restarted when I turned 22.
It is after being 22 that my writing got down on the race track with no other pen to compete with but just with its own previous records-striving to create new ones. I am yet to turn 23 in July, so it’s been 9 (serious) months that I have taken my found passion to another level, a level of nurturing.

What is your writing process like?

It depends on the kind of content that I am writing.

If I have chosen to write on a political issue then I ought to do a sufficient amount of research. Once done with researching, I bookmark the pivotal pages or points and then I put my thoughts down on the screen. Even though I haven’t written much on political or social agendas, this I have understood that the deeper and accurate the research, the more impactful the end product would be.

If it is something fictional (which most of the times my writings are) or simply a self-help article, all I do is put down my story or article on paper. I prefer to (though still struggling) pen down my story the way it comes to me, without any pause or over-thinking. Then I rephrase the sentence structures, replace the almost-right words with the perfect words and the placement of paragraphs is rearranged.

Do you have a writing routine? If so, what’s a typical day like for you?

Being a naïve, I am still struggling (like lot of other things) to have a routine, a decent writing routine. Having heard a lot about how a fixed time at a fixed place can help in creating and maintaining the writing flow, I still am trying to make such a routine my niche.

But if it comes down to a typical day for me then such day cannot be inclusive only of writing. My typical day involves sessions of writing, reading and studying about reading or writing.

What motivates you to write?

I have always been an artistic person. Since childhood I had been into many such fields like sketching, calligraphy, pottery, and music during school-time. After hopping from domain to domain, finally I have landed down on the art of writing and reading. If art cannot define me then nothing else can and if I cannot define art then I dread if there is anything else that I can ever define; that is the reason which motivates me to write and strive for betterment every day.

Also, immersing into the world of fiction allows me to be the creator of my new world, lets me decide what should and should not be happening, and that fun is what keeps me going.

What was the first thing you did when you found out your book was being published?

When I will find out that my book is being published then like any paranoid person, I wouldn’t believe it first. Then my optimistic side would try to overpower the paranoid one and I will re-confirm the news from every source that is possible. I know this because this is what happens when I achieve anything huge.

Once everything is confirmed, I will share it with my dad and all my close ones.

Are you currently working on anything new?

Well, I have a lot going in my head but haven’t settled down on anything as of now. Though there is a project that has been offered to me and soon I am going to get started with it. The project is nothing like what I had thought but as a beginner I wouldn’t mind experimenting.

If you weren’t a writer, what would your career be?

This question is bit weird for me to answer, *laugh* as by profession I am an engineer and writing is what I do before and after my office timings.

But there are plans, some major ones, in my head. Let’s see how the implementation goes.

What is the easiest part of writing for you? What is the hardest part?

For me, the easiest part of writing is to have the crux of my story in my mind. Knowing what is the basic message or theme of my fictional work/ non-fictional article is almost always there in the back of my mind.

Hardest part (here I am talking about the content of my blog-posts) is definitely to be me in my short stories and still make them go along different paths from the ones my previous stories/articles had gone through. Knowing what I want to write about but how and what form of story would convey it in the best way becomes a daunting task for me.

What’s one thing you learned through writing that you wish you knew before you started?

As I am still in the inception stage of this art-Writing, I think I am yet to find/ learn about any such thing, if there would be any.

What is your favorite book or genre? Is there a special book that made you realize you wanted to write?

Anything that pertains to fiction, be it fictional romance or suspense or thriller or anything, can be considered my favorite.
I won’t say that A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini made me realize that I wanted to write because I knew that writing is something that I should be doing long before reading them, but it was after I read them that something clicked and I started my serious writing.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Myself being one of them, the only advice that I give to myself and would offer to others too is-Never give up on your dreams. And if you dare to dream, dare to work for it too.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

I think I have already said enough in my answers above. The only thing I would like to add is to pay my gratitude to Rachel, the interviewer, to have my interview published on her blog even after me forgetting to send her my answers back on time. *giggle*

About Aditi

Having relished the diversity of an as large nation as India, Aditi Sharma, a B.Tech graduate, has her home in New Delhi and is currently working in Bangalore. Having said about diversity, she has lived in Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, and Bhubaneshwar during her course from schooling to graduation to her job in Bangalore.

Engineer by profession, her soul’s most cherishable moments are the ones around books. Reading and writing came naturally to her (though a bit late) when she had her first serious read-The Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, but now they are here to stay, for ever. Though she prefer to read and write more of fiction work, now-a-days she is having her hands and eyes on non-fiction too.

Through blogging she is trying to reach out to more and more like-minded people, who believe in the art of writing, in the hard work behind writing, in the qualitative writing.

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