Why should you not write a book?
Prerak Desai
Strategy & Transactions @ EY-Parthenon | MDI Gurgaon | Chartered Accountant | Author - 'Waiting to Arrive'
(Hi, I work in consulting during the day and write at night. I recently published my debut novel. With this newsletter, my aim is to share my experiences, mistakes, and tips on how to write so that it becomes easier for fellow aspiring writers)
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There can be multiple reasons why you feel you should write, hence we are not focusing on those. What we are focusing on are reasons why you should never write a novel! So, what are those??
Two primary reasons why you should never write a novel are - Fame and Money.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the above reasons. The only problem is both of the above reasons materialize when you become a successful writer. That in itself is so rare that it sounds like an oxymoron. It is not about just being a published author, but being an author whose books become best-sellers. It is extremely rare to be the author whose books become classics and do not get forgotten as time passes.?
I think the one reason why you should write a novel is - you have a story to tell.
It is the most important condition too. If you just start writing without being able to see the start, middle, and end of the story at a very high level, you will exhaust yourself in a couple of pages. You will never be able to go to 20K or 40K words.?
When you have a story, you know it, you feel it, and there is no choice for you but to express that story in some form and writing can be that form if you are inclined textually.
When you have a story, you are able to see the journey of the character from start to end. You will not yet be able to see all the details, those details will take shape at later stages, but what you have is a high-level map. If you don't have a map, you don't have a story yet.?
Writing is an exercise in delayed gratification, or an exercise in gratification that never comes.
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Hence, if your reasons are fame or money, it will become very hard to sustain when you have spent some time on the book, you are lost in the plot you are trying to weave, and finally, you will give up. But, if your reasons for writing are because you just want to tell the story to the world, you will not give up till you express that story in some form.?
Hence, ask yourself - Why do you want to write?
Some words on writing from Hemingway -
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About
Prerak is an MBA from MDI Gurgaon and a Chartered Accountant. He works at Deloitte on strategy, commercial due diligence projects for Private Equity and Corporate clients. After work, he can be found sitting at coffee shops and writing his second novel furiously.