Overcoming the Challenges of Being an Author in the Digital Age

 Problem Being an Author

You can’t Share your pain/Ask a Question:

• If I share my disappointments, desires, hurts or pain, people conclude that I am just saying it to gather their reaction or taking some survey for a new post.
• Whenever I say “I am not feeling good" or "I am down", instead of asking the reasons or convincing, my friends always trigger a question, "Was it your next novel title?”
• Few of my friends will be always extra cautious in sharing their personal stuffs. They don’t speak, since they fear that I may pen down their incidents in my blog. 
• Below is the one of the screen shot of a chat, with my so-called-Idiotic-friend. 

Chat History with my Friend

I will be cornered with my writings:

Friends tend to give advice from my own writings, when I look out for their advice or support. You can’t ignore their advice since it was my own writings.
Let me share an incident. I was very confused in choosing a decision. When I was looking for my friend support, he said "Follow your heart" as you said in your video. This is what happens if you are writer :(

There were extreme ends too, People trust me blindly and turn towards me for advice. They share their problem and expect me to offer a solution as well.

Expect to be a literate in English

People expect me to be perfect in English. When I do a mistake, I could hear the below Statements,

How did you manage to write such a big novel without knowing this word? 

Don’t you know this basic sentence of grammar?

 Don’t you know the meaning of this small word?

Must be her Story:

Though it’s fictional, People will think it happened in my life. 75% of the people asked me, whether the love between the protagonist in Touch of Mist was my life incidents. It’s absolutely fine. You have the rights to ask any question. But they don't believe, when I say "No" and educate them it’s an imaginary story.

If I write about a kissing scene, "Oh yeah, she must have kissed a guy."

If I write about a dating scene, "oh she must have for gone for a date."
I have written about committing suicide, “So I must have committed suicide :P ”.

I re-iterate, A person who writes about terrorism need not be a terrorist. I don’t have to be in love to write a love story.
On a funny note, I don’t think Mr. Perfect like Gowtham exist in the world. Mr.Perfect or Mrs. Perfect exists only in dream world and in movies.

Approach you for editing their content:
She is a writer. She should be able to write/Edit an article for me. I always write only when it makes me happy and if any incident touches my soul. I enjoy taking part in contest and that’s the reason I participate in contest

Writing is not my passion, I enjoy writing and its one of the thing I love. When people approach me for editing their content or to help them in writing out something, I really can’t do that. I am being forced to write. In that case, definitely my quality won’t be good.

OMG!! You are an Author:

All my friends whom they knew me before publishing a book, say “My friend have published a book.” For them, I am still Deepika with the same old tag “my classmate”, "my room-mate", "my college mate", "my colleague". It feels good to be in that zone.

But the people whom I meet new, there came lots of embarrassing situation.

When they stumble across my post or book and when they understand that I have written a novel they say, “Deepika, I never knew you are an author. Was I talking to an author? “

People don’t stop there. They ask, why are you so simple, being an author?

But Yes, thanks to all my readers and Friends. This is my 234th post and it would have not been possible without you. I thank each and every person/incident who has been my inspiration in writing.

Touch of Mist Book Review by Destination Infinity

Touch of Mist Book Review by Destination Infinity

Review by Destination Infinity

Touch of Mist is the first book written by Deepika Muthusamy. It’s about love, marriage, separation, and reunion(?). Frankly, I have not read many relationship-based books, and I was glad to read this one: it was like cool breeze in a perpetually hot Chennai!

What makes two people fall in love with each other? Why do they find each other so interesting during the relationship phase, and why does the equation change (sometimes immediately) after marriage? What is the reason for this change – are they internal or external factors?

These are the topics dealt with in book. Not directly – through a story. The story is good, and I loved the first 85% of the book. But the climax, and the scenes leading to it, could have been shorter. When you know what’s going to happen, a surprise might have made the story more memorable, or it could have been kept shorter.

The writing style of the author is good and there is continuity. I was able to create a picture of the story in my mind, as it happened – to the credit of the author. But certain scenes where the protagonists meet accidentally (on the way) could have been avoided as it felt like they were deliberately inserted to take the story forward.

Also, the scenes where someone talks to prevent people who have just attempted suicide to refrain from it, and they accept it immediately, was not convincing. Just when I thought undue  importance was being given to suicides in the story, the author makes one of the protagonist open a suicide helpline, and that was an impressive thought.

The author has brought out the relationship between the two protagonists very well. The conflicts have also been brought out well and I guess modern youth could easily identify with the protagonists. The Adam and Eve dialogues, giving out the differences in thinking between men and women, is very good.

Overall, this is a good read. I think it helps to read books in multiple genres as it broadens our perspective.

You can buy this book from Amazon in India. 

[Disclaimer: This is an affiliate link. If you click on it and buy the product, I may get a small commission.]

Destination Infinity