The world is changing and so are the mediums to connect with the readers. Today, I was invited as a speaker alongside with Ketan Bhagat and Indranil Mukherjee to discuss about adaptation of literature to cinema in the Phoenix Literature Festival that was organized online. So it was quite a strange experience to sit in your room and still connect with so many people outside who are willing to hear you out and want to learn from your rises and falls. Definitely I was excited to be the part of this festival and was looking forward to it but I had no idea that the organizers of the festival will behave and plan everything so professionally. I just loved the effort they put in and planning was superb. Special thanks to Rahul Sharma for inviting me to the panel.
We had a great start of the session. I was moreover a listener than a speaker thoughout the session. Indranil sir had so many things to say and his point of view was just amazing and Ketan sir – well you just can’t say enough about this guy; you need to meet him once to know how fun loving person he is! The session was moderated by Ssumit Kashyap and he was just amazing. I can’t praise him enough for his preparation and execution of it.
Well, after the session we had Q&A session where there was one question that made me write this post. I thinking about it over and over and then decided to finally pour my thoughts over it.
The question was pretty simple – what is your advice to budding writers and readers?
There’s nothing new about the question but the mood that was set by Ketan sir made us utter the real advise, that we often refrain to say out in open. So my reply to this was, “For the reader I have the advise to read as many books as you can because the world in which we are living at the moment is definitely not worth living in. Just delve in the writer’s world and enjoy the meaning of true life. And for the writers, I have the advise to be patient. If you have some idea in your mind, keep it to yourself. If you have written it, hide it under the bed. If you want to publish it – without listening to the world – you need to find the publisher who will loot you less because out there, everyone will try to rob you – loot you. You need to find someone who will loot you less.”
We were not trying to discourage anyone but our motive was to keep everyone aware of what to expect from it. I still believe that if you are willing to do something so you should definitely do it but I also warn people not to feel disheartened when the things doesn’t go as per your plan. Because often the reality is different from what is appears like.
With this, I take a leave from you guys. We’ll soon meet again with some new thoughts. If you want to ask anything, you can comment or mail me. I’ll try me best to cover it in the next episode of #SandeepSpeaks
Sandeep Sharma 