Welcome!
AndaleeB Wajid is a writer with a repertoire spanning young adult, romance and horror genres.
Her early influences were, as she puts it, derived from a family of storytellers, and
she has eased into writing over 40 books in just 14 years, and going strong.
In a world where the cliché is that everyone has one book in them, Andhalee Bwajid has
a stream inside her, and she taps into it with ease.
What is her method?
How did it come to define her life?
And how does she keep finding the characters who dot her novels?
This will be a conversation about how our careers find us at times, instead of us searching
for them.
Andaleeb is riffing through the chapters in her life.
This is episode 20 of My First Job, the podcast that covers engaging career journeys, and
every single one is full of twists, turns and insights.
I am Venu Gopal Nair, the host of the podcast, and CEO of Ideascape Communications, an advertising
agency into branding, creative and design.
So settle in, sit back and enjoy the conversation.
Andaleeb, welcome to the show.
Hi Venu, thank you for having me here.
So good to have you on the show.
It's wonderful to see that in a world where people say that not too many people are reading
anymore, you continue to write away and attract a whole new legend of fans and introduce so
many more people into writing.
Thank you.
Tell me, what is a typical writing day like?
I treat my writing like a job, not like a hobby.
So I take it very seriously in that I sit down at my desk at say in the morning after
I finish my breakfast or whatever at 9.30, 10.
I don't write continuously.
I try and finish a chapter or whatever I'm working on right now.
Then I take a break and I have other things also.
I do a bit of freelance writing on the side, some proofreading, a sort of other bread and
butter job sort of thing.
I devote some time to that.
But I have like a very structured plan sort of thing, which I try to follow.
Sometimes it's I'm not successful because of various things, you know, family happening
or generally, you know, sometimes I'm just tired of writing.
So I allow myself to take a break.
I am my own boss and a very strict boss at that.
So I think writing so many books and publishing them has been made possible because of my
commitment and being very strict with myself.
I'm going to say it just wouldn't be possible.
I mean, we talk of discipline, but unless you follow it, structure, discipline and sitting
down every day and getting something out is one of the keys to getting this going.
Yes.
You know, people think that writing has this very ephemeral air about it and you know,
that it's something very arty and you need to have this muse and all that stuff.
And I feel like it's my job.
So I sit down, whether there is any muse or not sitting by my side, I don't know.
So I just sit down and I write.
I try to.
You summon the muse.
I don't know.
So I sit down and write and I try to like, you know, focus on getting this story forward,
especially since I do quite a bit of self publishing and I have to decide my own, like,
you know, my publishing schedule every year for me is not just about writing a book for
me.
I have to take into factors like putting it out there, whether this is going to be self
published, whether I'm going to approach a publisher, you know, making those decisions.
There's a lot of conscious work that goes into being a writer today for me, at least
I don't say this is the same for everyone.
Like you said, everyone has a book in them and I think that's very true.
But at the same time, I'm kind of feel like I've gone beyond that thing where, you know,
writing, I think it's not just my career, it's my job.
It somehow pays my bills.
This is all I've ever wanted.
I just wanted to have a job where I can write stories.
And it's wonderful to hear a writer say that it pays the bills because that is the other.
I wouldn't say, you know, it pays all the bills.
I would say to a certain extent, I'm, you know, because there are certain privileges
that I do have.
So I never advise people to take writing as a full time job unless they have certain things
that, you know, that they're not, that doesn't affect them.
Things like sense and bills and all that.
So if a lot of those things are taken care of, then you can consider writing as a full
time job.
And having said that, I have other things also, like I do a lot of other freelancing
stuff on the site.
So writing pays the bills, but not...
You know, one of the things I saw, a session that you had done, where you said you came
from a family of storytellers.
Yes.
I thought that that's a beautiful way of getting the inspiration going early on.
So can you take us through some of those early bits?
My father was this sort of very instinctive storyteller, you know, he was an avid reader
and my mother is also a reader.
She used to read, now she's stopped.
They used to read a lot of books and I think, you know, so when my brother and I was small,
there was no 24 hour access to entertainment like how it is today.
We would trouble him sometimes, I think, especially because we were not in Bangalore.
We had traveled to Kerala for his Ayurvedic treatment for something.
So especially there, we were really bored, you know, in the evenings.
So he would sit down and tell us these stories, which he claimed was from this big book, which
I had never seen in our house.
So he kept saying it's from this big book and everything.
So and each day, so he would stop like at a cliffhanger and he would say enough for
today.
So tomorrow, you know, we would wait till that time when he would sit and continue the
story.
And later I got to know that there was no such book.
He was making it on the go, you know.
You know, my brother does that with his kids now.
So he tells stories, he makes it up on the fly.
I think, you know, like even my nani, my maternal grandmother also used to tell stories.
She would recount stories that she'd read.
She was also an avid reader.
She would read all these Urdu stories and, you know, books and novels.
So she would sit down and tell us something that she remembered.
So I think that tradition of listening to a story, listening to something and imagining
it happening somewhere in your mind, because that's the thing about listening to a story
is something that, you know, takes a little bit of effort for the listener also.
Yes.
Stay in one place and to not let your mind wander.
So I think those things helped me in ways that I didn't really imagine.
And I think when you said that your father was an instinctive storyteller about, you
know, stopping at the points where he knew he'd come back the next day.
It's one of those well known sort of marketing strategies that, you know, everything from
serials to the earliest serialized novels that used to appear in magazines.
You didn't have subscriptions, but you had this draw where the next week would have the
next installment.
And I think a lot of wonderful writers, especially in the vernacular, came out because of that
constant draw that people had from, whether it is Pony and Selvin or, you know, Kerala,
you had a whole lot of writers who did that.
That was almost like a selling strategy.
Where did your actual experiments with writing begin?
I had this typical angsty teenage growing up where I was not sure of what I wanted to
do.
And also for me, talking about, say, twenty five years ago, no, more than that.
So around twenty eight years ago, maybe life was very different in so many ways for a young
Muslim teenager who's a girl.
So there were certain expectations from the family about, you know, getting married and
having that.
I want to do something, but I didn't know what also.
Along with, you know, whatever I was studying and I got married when I was 19.
Writing was a sort of way for me to just express all this angst inside.
I kind of started writing fiction after I got married.
I had to finish college after my marriage.
The year after that, when I was expecting my son, I was extremely bored.
So I just sat and I started writing some short stories for children and I sent it out and
I forgot about it because after my son was born, you know, we were running between hospitals.
He was not well for a while.
So I forgot about it.
And then one of the stories got published and seeing my name.
So I had been published in the paper before this.
Those were like very small instances and I wasn't really sure I could do anything with
that, you know, because anyone can get an article published in the newspaper, but it
doesn't really mean anything.
I started writing these short stories for children's supplement called Open Sesame.
And that kind of, I would say, gave me this steady impetus to keep writing and sending
because they kept publishing.
And then after that, I moved to writing fiction for older people.
And I've had a fair share of my struggles in a sense, getting people to notice my writing
was not easy 15 years ago.
So, you know, four of my short stories were in a collection, I think, which Deepa is also
her stories were also in that collection.
That's how we got to know each other.
So it's called Curtains.
So after that, I wrote a novel.
I didn't know anything about writing a novel.
I didn't know how to plot.
I didn't know.
I didn't know what a plot was as in I vaguely knew it, but I didn't know how to apply that
knowledge while I was writing characterization things, which you learn as you keep reading
and writing.
So I was reading a lot and a lot of Indian books, actually books by Indian authors back
in the early 2000s, Indian writing was not what it is today.
You know, you just had Pooja Banerjee, you had Shashi Deshpande and Jhoopa Lahiri.
So I read all their books, I even read even the obscure ones, I used to look for them,
because I felt that I couldn't write a story, I had to write a story that I could relate
to.
And for me to be able to do that in a space where you didn't really see that many Indian
women featured, unless they were NRIs, like in Jhoopa Lahiri's books, most of them were
NRIs.
It took some time and you know, some help from a few very good mentors.
And I was writing, I wrote my first novel, and I sent it out to a lot of publishers,
I had to physically take printouts and say no courier it to them and hardly heard from
them.
Some, some refused some like, you know, if I was, if I had emailed them, some had just
rejected outright.
There were a lot of problems with that book, I'm sure.
But I felt like I wish someone would take the time, you know, to invest the time to
make that book better, to help me, you know, in that, but that didn't happen, unfortunately,
because I don't blame the publishers, there are a lot of people who want to be writers,
even though considerably less back then as compared to today.
Today, everyone wants to be a writer, no one wants to actually write anything.
They want to have written something, everyone is more interested in the publishing as that
perceived glamour is there now.
Because writing is the most unglamorous job.
You know, you get up and you may not have showered or anything, you will sit and write
and no one knows what you were looking like when you were writing a really good scene.
And that's like, you know, you get away with it.
The life of a writer, but when you're publishing, you're putting your face out in front of the
world and everyone sees you, they have this impression of you.
And I think that's the sort of impression that people have.
So they see only that, that aspect, people from the outside see the last part where,
you know, we finally have, you know, the writer has finished the book and everything and you
know, it's looking great and the writer is looking great and sit on a stage with some
celebrity and launch the book.
They don't see all the hard work that has gone behind that.
It took me a lot of time to find a publisher and that also was not a very good publisher.
My first book came out with them and then I subsequently published my second and third
with Roopa.
You know, I mean, I shouldn't feel foolish about it, but 14, 15 years ago when I started
writing and, you know, trying to get published, I think everyone has that dream.
You write one book and it gets published and you're like famous and everyone knows you
and obviously that doesn't happen right away.
And then it doesn't happen even after the second, third book.
And after that, you kind of realize, okay, that's not going to happen.
Let me, I'm going to write because I love writing and it's literally one of the only
things that I can properly do.
So I might as well do it.
So I wrote and I published in 2014.
I decided I'm going to take a one year break from writing because by then I had finished
writing 10 books and only some five had been published.
So that is, you'd already written 10 by that time.
Yeah.
And I was very disheartened with the publishing world.
I said, I can't just keep writing and wait for this, you know, to be picked up.
And I don't even know if it's going to be picked up.
I don't even know if anyone's going to publish it.
What's the point of me accumulating all these books like this, you know, and self publishing
was not something I was comfortable with back then.
I didn't really understand how it worked.
So I took a break from writing and that year I had four books come out, you know, so more
than this Biryani and a trilogy, which I had a young adult trilogy called Damana trilogy.
So four books came out and I was waiting for December 31st because I told myself, so if
I take myself, I'm a very strict boss.
So if I give myself break, I am very strict about that also.
No, you're not writing before 2015.
Jan 1st, 2015, I just started like, you know, so I was like, I can't wait.
And I told myself, I am never doing this again.
This one year break was a very stupid idea because I think, you know, in a way writing
is a sort of addiction also for me.
I had deprived myself of that.
So it's a bit complicated trying to explain how writing is.
No, just to interject, I think when you said you took that break, you actually stopped
doing what you really liked doing.
It was almost like somebody who loves food and intentionally starve yourself to the point
where you're probably bursting with ideas when you come back to it all over again.
Yeah, yeah.
No, but that was like, I told myself that I'm never doing this again.
At the most, I'll take a break for maybe one or two weeks or a month, but that's it.
Never a year.
Because I don't think I can last for that long without writing, you know, writing has
a lot of psychological aspects to me, for me, you know, so for me, I kind of feel very
good about myself when I'm writing, you know, it's a sort of, I think it's a lot to do with,
you know, whatever the psychologists must be calling dopamine and all that.
It feels good when I'm writing.
So I'm like, why should I deprive myself of that intentionally?
Absolutely.
Now, when you're writing, when you're actually writing, go ahead and write, let's say a thousand
words, two thousand words, and then stop to review it.
Though in retrospect, sometimes what you think is bad when you read four days later may actually
be good and vice versa.
Yeah, you know, it's not possible to take leave from a job just because you don't feel
like it.
So I sit down and I, you know, if not specifically writing, then something, see, writing for
me means there are so many things.
I have all these notebooks where I make notes.
So if I don't feel like doing the actual writing, I sit and make notes, which is mostly me doing
a lot of stream of consciousness scribbling, you know, trying to get things.
So if so, in that way, when I get back to the writing, the words flow easily.
So I have notebooks with me, which I kind of carry with me wherever I'm going.
I use them to jot down my thoughts about that particular story.
I am obsessed with notebooks.
Notebook is just for this book, for this novel or this series, you know, so I'm not going
to mix it up.
So for that way, I have a lot more notebooks that way.
So I kind of I don't feel like when I sit down to write, it's not about the word count.
The word count is something that I do subconsciously look at when today, okay, so I've written
this much.
But for me, it's more like, you know, if I'm able to finish a chapter, the chapter could
be like, say, 900 words, 1500 words, 2000 words, if I'm in the mood for it, and if it's
going really well.
But sometimes you have to physically stop because you know, it physically hurts to write
beyond a point experimenting with my own, you know, posture and my everything.
So I kind of know that I can't do beyond a certain point.
And my body kind of tells me that it's time to stop.
Because sometimes when I start typing, when I'm very tired, I start making a lot of typos.
I know that, okay, this is my brain is also not working.
My hands are not working.
It's time to take a break, you know, so.
So when it comes to your journey as a writer, now you've been writing for 14 years, what
is the internal change?
The reason I'm saying is that in a job with more experience, there are certain aspects
of the job that get easier.
There are certain parts of it which get very monotonous as well.
And there are things that keep you going because of some little spark that came out from somewhere.
Like you said, you probably need a break to come back to it to realize how much you like
writing.
When you're thinking of your characters, like you said, you make notes, and then you're
thinking about these characters.
And now you're almost assigning one notebook to each plot points and then say, okay, this
is how it comes.
Which is, I think, a much more organized way of feeding that inspiration because then becomes,
okay, I know that this particular thing.
So you open that and certain connections happen.
It's very tangible.
And it's not something that's just in my mind, you know, when I put it down on paper.
And of course, my mind, I'm going to be very liable to forget something that I might have
thought of, you know.
So when I look back, certain things pop up at me.
As for what you asked about the internal evolution over the years, my writing has definitely
become faster in the sense, I physically type also very fast.
So I think that kind of also helps, you know.
So that and I think, you know, being able to see the end of the book much before, like
earlier, it was not easy for me to see the end of the book.
And I would have a vague idea of how it's going to end.
If it's a romance, it's obviously going to be a happily ever after sort of thing.
You know, you have to reach that point.
You have to create the conflict, a believable conflict.
And then you have to make sure that the reasons for that conflict are explained.
And then that conflict goes away.
And then the protagonists can finally be united or whatever.
It used to take me a lot of time to figure that out.
I would go around in circles.
Now I feel it's faster.
I kind of have an idea of how to make things happen and, you know, what to do.
I think the technique has improved, the writing is much more, I would say, contemporary.
As I've grown older, I feel like I've started writing younger.
So I don't know.
You can grow much younger over the years.
Yes.
Because when I was younger, I was writing about people who are, say, my age.
I was very disconnected from all of it, because I was a stay at home mother and I didn't know
the world outside.
I didn't really, you know, I did two jobs.
I did a couple of jobs.
There was one job where I had to go in twice a week.
You know, that kind of really helped expand my world view.
And for me, all the jobs were all like fodder for my books.
So, you know, all the jobs and all the people and all the politics and everything.
So I was like, you wait, you know, it's going to show up in some book somewhere.
It's going to appear in a book somewhere.
I was very disconnected from the world as such, apart from, you know, whatever I saw
on TV and all that, or read on the internet.
And I was not happy about that in a sense.
You know, I felt like, first of all, I've lived a very limiting life.
I can't keep writing stories about just like about stories about people like me, because
that's not the point.
If I am a writer, I should be able to live all these multiple lives.
That's one of the advantages of being a writer.
And I think as I've grown older, stepped out a lot more and observed people, I have younger
friends.
So now that I'm older, I'm able to write about younger people.
Like, you know, most of my heroines are in their 20s.
When I was in my 20s, I was living a very different life.
And I was the mother of two kids before 30.
These are girls who are nothing like that.
It kind of feels, I feel very happy about having this altered ego sort of thing.
I think that's been my evolution.
So how do you shift gears?
Are you writing only one book at a time?
Or are you saying that today let me write romance, tomorrow let me do horror?
No, I don't do that.
I don't do that because you know what happens is when I'm writing, you need to get that
voice of the character right.
I don't want to mix that up.
I do end up starting multiple projects and then I kind of let whichever it is take precedence,
the one that I feel more pulled towards.
So currently, like I would have three projects open in my laptop, two of them might be romance,
one might be thriller.
I try not to mix genres when I'm writing.
Sometimes it helps, you know, because sometimes I do get very bogged down by if I'm writing
romance and romance at the time, end of it, I'm so fed up.
I'm going to convert this into a thriller and I'm going to make them kill each other
or something.
So I, you know, so I don't prevent that from happening.
I see which kind of pulls me in.
So I was doing that right now.
Also, I was working on two books at the same time.
One book has suddenly gone on to 28,000 words.
The other one is still in the early like 12,000 words.
So I'm like, okay, I'll finish this one first and then come back to this.
But I kind of brought it up to that point.
So it's not like completely starting afresh.
So I don't tell myself that let me finish this and then start.
So if I feel like I need to start, I just start and then I make notes so that I can
come back to it.
I'm also a very instinctive writer in that, but I also plan things, you know, so if I'm
writing about something, I make plans, extensive plans about what's going to happen in the
book.
As a reader, what kind of books do you like?
I like reading crime fiction.
I enjoy romance.
I really like police procedures, mysteries and not that much of a fan of true crime,
but I like crime fiction, thrillers and those sort of things.
I like I am my favorite, all time favorite, not a very big fan of literary fiction because
you know, I feel like I don't have the mental energy and the time that it asks for me to
sit down and put myself in because when you're reading literary fiction, you have to give
a bit of yourself also when you're reading it, you know.
One thing I don't read at all is nonfiction.
My son reads nonfiction.
Is this really my son?
How can he read nonfiction?
Yeah.
And I love, I love fantasy, young adult fantasy.
So I basically read whatever I can except nonfiction.
Okay.
Are you a storyteller mom as well?
Like your nanny was and your father was?
Not so much.
When my kids were small, you know, maybe I would tell them some scary story to scare
them to sleep more than anything else.
So not so much of a storyteller mom and you know, they don't have the patience to do it
with me and I don't have the patience with them.
They're all grown up now.
Both of them are grown up.
So, you know, but with the younger kids, I enjoy like, you know, reading with them from
a book and you know, with my nieces and nephews and all that, I enjoy that.
So.
It's an amazing thing as to how you write fiction, but you also enjoy reading fiction.
It's not that you're satiated and then you say, okay, I want to go back to.
I come across a lot of writers who don't read much.
They want to write, you know, but they don't want to read.
So I find that very strange, you know, because it's like one of the basic tools to be a writer
is to read.
So if you don't read, what's going to happen is that you're going to get an idea.
I have the best idea in the world.
If you don't read, you don't know, you wouldn't know that say Stephen King would have written
it like in 1975 or someone else would have written it long ago.
So, you know, if you don't read, then you won't know what's out there and reading for
enjoyment is something that really has a lot of goals associated with it today.
Eating for enjoyment is not something that's considered very seriously these days.
People have these reading goals and they have these bookstagrams where they will put up
very aesthetically designed photos of a book that they've read.
I mean, I love it when they do with my books, but I'm like, I hope that you read the book
also, you know.
It's almost like you're keeping it.
Yeah, it's like you're keeping accounts of how much was spent and where did you spend
it.
You have a lot of these bookstagram accounts who are doing great work when it comes to
promoting books, you know, but it's become this whole ecosystem, you know, where publishers
send books to these Instagrammers and they will post, make a beautiful looking post.
But I'm like, have you read the book?
What did you think?
You know, when I see the reviews on Amazon, especially everything, everyone wants to know
when the next book coming out.
But I'm like, what about this one?
What did you like about this one?
Especially if it's a series, the connected series, which really does well on Amazon.
That's what everyone wants to know.
We want to know what's happening to the next couple, you know, when is their story coming
out.
So those are the things I mean, so reading, I feel like, you know, to a certain extent
taken a backseat in the sense there's so much more competing for it, you know, as compared
to before, before when we were kids, we just had reading, we didn't have it, you know,
we had TV would come at very specific times.
And, you know, after that, there was nothing to watch on TV.
So for us, our entertainment was TV.
And today, entertainment is not even a question.
There's so much and you don't know what to choose.
So if someone actively chooses to read a book, it's amazing, I feel, you know, because they
have put aside, you know, temptations from Netflix and everything else to sit with a
book that our readers today.
What about different forms of writing, maybe movie scripts and stuff like that?
Is that something that you've ever looked at seriously?
I kind of want to, but at the same time, I think, you know, I'm a huge loner when it
comes to writing.
I'm not a very collaborative person, although I have collaborated with two of my friends
and we've brought out two series together last year and this year.
That's a different deal, you know, because these are my friends, I can just tell them
anything.
But I think that writing for movies and all, it's an extremely collaborative effort and
also physically you need to be present, I think, especially in India.
You need to be in Bombay.
You need to be part of that writer's room.
So those are things I don't see myself doing.
I mean, if I was, say, 20 years younger, if I was like, you know, unmarried and didn't
have children.
So maybe those are things.
And if I was from a different, you know, a more open and, you know, open and broad minded
community and family, then those are things I could have pursued.
But I don't feel like I've missed out on something.
So I'm like, it's OK.
I'm happy with this.
So someone make a movie out of my book and pay me good money and I'll be more than happy.
More than happy to see that change now.
You know, one of the things that I've found, which is really different between advertising
films and let's say the real film or books is that you have to develop character.
The character is someone who starts out with a name and a job or whatever it is in a certain
situation.
So you expand on that whole thing.
You give them characteristics, you give them situations.
Advertising relies on stereotypes.
So you've got to make out in the very first couple of seconds as to where is this family,
what is the relationship?
And 30 seconds later, the story is over, which is why probably a lot of advertising filmmakers
have not really transitioned to the two and a half hour format.
But you're a very atypical writer because I think in three months, if you finish a book,
that is not the normal rate at which people operate.
No, I can finish a book in one month.
Wow.
Three months is when I'm being very easy with myself.
Okay.
Today or tomorrow, I will write.
Then I take three months.
If I religiously sit and write every day, then I can easily finish a book in a month,
40 days at the most.
You know what you were saying about advertising, but there are a lot of people from the advertising
world who are doing really well as writers, who have Anuja, Chauhan, Judy also.
So yeah, I think from a very different, I think their approach to writing is very different.
I'm very fascinated by it.
I'm a very different, like I said, self-taught and instinctive writer.
So I find that very fascinating.
That is one of the things which I believe is it's almost instinctive because it's not
as if you've got this whole examples at home, which you followed.
There was this nice podcast where Nadal Pandey talks about her mother Shivani sending out
the serialized novel to Dharmayog.
And she said her mother used to write at the kitchen table and she used to write between
meals and she used to write between.
So it's not as if she was able to set up a time.
She had to find the time.
She had to sit down and write and then do it.
Writing is something that keeps you inspired.
It's something that you need to do because it helps you in so many ways.
See, I feel that women writers have it very tough.
We are handling multiple things which male writers have no clue about.
If you're a woman, if you're a mother, if you're a homemaker, whatever, if you're a
career person, then it adds along with all these things.
You have a family, you have people who depend on you.
I see male writers posting about how they locked themselves in their room for six hours,
came out with this, I finished three chapters, four chapters, five chapters.
In my head, you won't believe the sort of gullies I will give that man.
Because you had someone cook for you, you had someone take care of the house, you had
someone, whether you have kids or not, someone probably brought you food and gave it to you.
If all writers had someone who would do all this for them, then everyone would be very
productive.
So I think women especially, whatever they do, however they do, I am amazed because each
one of us has different issues in our houses and it could be a sick parent or a sick in-law
or someone and you have to do that and do your writing along with that.
So your priorities tend to get watered down as a result.
So in my case, I would say I don't tell people, look at me, I'm so focused, I'm so disciplined.
If I can do it, you can do it.
I don't think everyone can do it because you need to have that sort of ecosystem around
you that enables you to write.
I had that.
I mean, when my mother-in-law was alive, she would take care of the house for me until
two years ago, everything was her domain.
So I would just go, she would tell me, go do and write.
So when you have someone who takes care of that and my kids have grown up, I have been
writing from the time when they were climbing all over me.
I've faced that also.
They've grown up now, so thankfully I don't have to deal with that.
So many women would write so many wonderful books.
That's the sad reality of our times.
I'm sorry I ranted about this, but this is a major rant for me.
I feel very strongly about this, especially when I see male writers posting about their
accomplishments and I'm like, very few of them I think are aware of the sacrifice it
goes into.
Maybe their wife would have hard work that she would have done.
100% agree, Adhavi.
Everything that you say is 100% true simply because of their gender advantage.
To have so much more going for them because of this.
The strange part is that they don't think it's an advantage because they never have
seen the other side.
As far as they're concerned, that was the way they grew up.
So it was not as if things are any different after they get married.
So that I think is one of the other aspects which never comes into...
Behind whatever the writing that happens, so much has gone behind all that.
It's very hard for someone who is not a writer to understand the sort of things that you've
had to go through to reach there.
I mean, I'm not saying all women are suffering.
To a certain extent, there are some people who can afford to have help, who can afford
to have people taking care of the bills and all that stuff.
So it's not like a one size fits all.
But overall, women have to struggle harder, like a man says he locks himself in his room
for six hours.
If a woman was to do that, the house would be burnt down by the time she comes out.
So there won't be any house left.
So it's very sad that women have to...
I love your honesty, Adilip, because these are the things...
You must find it a little strange that we've not discussed your books at all.
We spent...
No, I'm okay.
I'm not a writer.
I'd like to understand from your point of view, is there a book that you really enjoyed
writing or something that after you've written, after all these years, you come back to and
then say that, yeah, this is something where I think I kind of got close to what I was
looking at.
I don't know how to explain this to you, Vinu, but when I am writing, I really feel like
I am not myself.
I really feel like there is some external thing.
I don't want to sound like superstitious or something, only because when I go back and
read it, I'm like, oh my God, did I write this?
Whether it's good or bad, I'm like, I can't believe that I was able to put that sentence
together in that way, because I don't have any memory of creating that.
I've enjoyed writing a lot of books over the years and each year something new I'm bringing
out, so something is a new favourite.
I've just signed a deal with a publisher, with Penguin actually, for a young adult novel
that's late this year, I think.
And that's one book which I really enjoyed writing, because I think, you know, I wrote
about a very spunky young Muslim girl who goes out and gets what she wants and given
up the situation in which we are, you know, writing about a girl like that itself is a
form of rebellion.
You know, they expect your heroines to be a certain way, especially when me being an
Indian Muslim woman writer, there's so many adjectives before writer for me.
My heroines especially, people have this, you know, people assume everywhere.
My recently released Jasmin Villa series, which is very interesting, what happened is
I self-published the series in 2019.
Westland acquired it last year and this year in February they brought out all three books
as paperbacks and ebooks.
They've done a brilliant job with the covers, with the marketing.
It looks lovely.
Since then, I have published quite a few books because there there is no publishing schedule.
Whatever it is, I decide.
I can publish three books today if I want.
The readers were used to seeing all this, but you know, the people who hadn't read so
many of my ebooks because people have certain problems with reading ebooks.
For them, you know, they picked up those books now and they are like, this is amazing.
We have no idea how you were writing so well about all this.
You would have seen my heroines have evolved from what they were when I was writing and
you know, publishing with publishers to when I'm self-publishing, I don't have to answer
anyone.
So I would say, you know, the recent Jasmin Villa trilogy, the heroines are very normal
Indian Muslim girls who have these very relatable issues facing them.
Stuff to do with marriage and, you know, they fall in love and all those sort of things.
I find it very hard to specifically pinpoint, you know, which book was more enjoyable because
some of the books were actually very difficult to write.
Especially the horror ones take a lot of time because I always feel that horror is very
subjective.
Writing romance is a very universal emotion.
Everyone more or less feels the same way.
They understand when you read about, you know, two people having chemistry or, you know,
gazes meeting or whatever, you understand it.
But horror is very subjective in that what scares me might not scare you.
So for me, it takes a lot of time to see whether this really works, whether it's coming out
across as scary or whether it's just cheesy, which range of horror does this fit into.
So I find it very fascinating and very tough to write also.
How does it work in self publishing?
You actually do most of the work yourself?
When you're self publishing, you're the publisher, you're the editor, you're the cover designer,
if so, if you want it.
You don't need anyone.
But what we like to do is we do hire people to do the cover for us.
Editing more or less, you know, we do each other's editing if we are working with friends.
Mostly it's our own self edits.
As for formatting, it's all been made very easy.
Technology has made it very easy.
You upload a Word document to a certain, say, software and it will take care of it.
It will create the ebook for you.
You just have to upload it on the Amazon backend.
So you end up doing all the work and you end up taking all the money.
The thing that I find most interesting, Antali, is through whatever you've told me, you sat
and listened, you absorbed in childhood, then you made your first little forays and then
figured out that, OK, this works, this doesn't work.
And then you persisted.
In the face of whether it was discouragement, whether it was the family situation or whether
it was whatever it is, you persisted and you managed to go through so many genres and experimented
with that.
I think the other part is that most writers tend to stick to whatever they find is successful
and then say, OK, my audience will read this, this is what.
You're a writer who explores new audiences apart from yourself, which is refreshing.
And the fact that you've taken to self publishing so easily, because that's another thing where
people say no.
But then it almost is, it goes into character with whatever you've done.
Is that a summation or is it you're missing parts of that?
No, no, no.
I think more or less it's right.
It's correct.
I think self publishing came to me at a time where I wanted to write and not be stopped
by a publisher for telling me that you're writing too much and we can't publish all
of this because they have their own constraints.
No one can publish so much.
And I was looking for a way where I could bring out my books and I could put them out
to the world.
Selling traditional publishing takes a very long time, it takes a year to a year and a
half from the time you sign the contract.
But getting to the contract stage itself is another six months in the works because getting
a publisher interested in your work, then finally asking for the full manuscript, they
like it.
Then they try to convince their sales and marketing team that this book will sell.
Then they send the contract and then you sign it.
And then after that, a year and a half.
So I am like, I don't have the patience for this.
I mean, I will publish with publishers because there is a lot of stigma associated with self
publishing in India.
People assume that because you probably didn't get a publisher, you self published.
When I started self publishing, people were like, but you've been published with Penguin,
with Bloomsbury, why are you self publishing?
I said, because I want to publish and I want to keep writing.
I don't want a publisher to stop me.
Striking that balance has not been easy, but I'm trying.
I was initially worried if I self published so much, will this affect how a publisher
looks at me?
For them, if they bring out one book a year, it's more than enough.
And here is this person bringing out say five, six books a year.
So how am I going to focus on the marketing for their book?
So this year when Westland brought out Jasmine Villa in February, I put a pause on my self
publishing.
They have invested a lot and they are doing a great job in terms of marketing.
So I shouldn't water it down by bringing out my own books, which might compete for it.
Those are certain things that I have to keep in mind.
You've so fluidly moved into this whole aspect of what it takes into marketing a book and
how the cover design is important and how it sort of gets the core of what the book
is all about.
In a bookshop earlier, okay, you see the front, otherwise you see only a spine.
And these days when you're scrolling, you just see a set of covers.
You're not really seeing much more.
So the world has changed and I think you've changed along with it.
And what do you believe is the right amount of marketing?
I think writers need to market themselves, especially so it's not easy.
So publishers have a lot of writers, so they are not going to excessively focus on you
unless you're a big celebrity, unless you have a very compelling story or something
that they know is a surefire hit.
No one can say what is going to be a surefire hit.
So marketing is something that writers can't shy away from today.
They have to be a part of it.
But I also feel again that you need to strike that balance where you can't be so in your
face with everyone constantly.
You can't tell people constantly like, buy my book, buy my book.
People are going to hate you after that.
The moment they see you, come somewhere, they'll run in the opposite direction.
You have to strike that tasteful balance where you know that you are selling your book, but
you're not selling yourself and you have to figure out how to make sure that you come
out of this still with a few friends left.
So writers, ideally what we want to do is to be left alone to do our writing.
We don't want to be all this.
But then everything comes with a set of expectations.
So when you're signing the contract itself with the publisher, there is a certain stipulation
about marketing, about appearing for book launches and all that.
And when you're self-publishing, you have to do whatever you can.
So you know, we, because social media is free.
So you know, Instagram, Instagram lives, where we talk or take questions from readers.
So interacting with readers has to happen over time, building a community of readers
who want to know what's, you know, what you're working on next.
It takes time.
Nothing happens overnight.
There is no such thing as an overnight success because overnight success has taken a long
time to happen.
I am not writing this one book and you know, not writing anything else for another two
years.
Then you, I mean, of course you can go ahead and do that, but it will be very difficult
to survive in the self-publishing landscape, especially because here it's like, if you're
out of sight, you're out of mind.
Thank you, Andhaleep.
Anything that you'd like to say to wrap up?
Though we haven't spoken about your books, I think you narrated your journey and whatever
you went through in such lucid detail.
I brought in some thing about my books anyhow.
I talked about, you know, especially Jasson Villa because it's recently released and all
that.
So viewers will pick it up because you know, it's a very nice three book series.
I think this was great.
I enjoyed talking to you, Venu.
I hope that you were able to, since we didn't specifically talk about my first job as Sajwit
as well, even though I did have a job.
Thank you, Andaleeb for coming on the show and it's been a real pleasure.
My first job, the podcast is a production from Ideascape Communications.
Guest relations, promotions and creative is managed by Deepa Ravi with occasional support
by Venu Gopal Nair.
Archiving and technical help is provided by LPS Jayachandran.