It feels like a lifetime.
I was young and literally restless, and strongly felt that the much-hyped digital advertising job I had just landed a couple of months back, wasn’t satisfying my creative needs as much as I thought it would. Hence, the blog.
Back then, I blogged about completely random things, without giving a f#@k about editing, spell check or even privacy. Yes, I had a strict No Personal Pictures On The Blog policy (which I broke only in late 2014) because back then putting your own pictures on your blog was considered cheesy, with the same amount of stigma as present day’s ‘Here’s My Bathroom Selfie’ pic on Facebook has. My blogging was always irregular – there were months and months of zero activity and then suddenly my blogging friends would be bombarded with two posts a week. This was mainly because I was writing for myself, and so I wrote whenever the hell I wanted to.
But then started the comments and as amateurish and lame-o as it might sound, comments made me swell with pride. Someone out there was actually reading what I was typing furiously during lunch breaks at work and this virtual attention was amazing, it fueled my desire to blog more.
And this is when I started making Blog Friends.
We were a bunch of people reading each other’s blogs and it felt so personal that we were even G-Talk friends – don’t give me that look, G-Talk was THE thing back then. Together, we formed a little blogging community, sharing tiny pieces of our lives, however layered or encrypted it might be, and developed a sense of camaraderie over the years. Most of them are still my friends!
All this while, along with the blogging and the virtual writing friends, my dream of writing a book was thriving. You see, I ALWAYS wanted to write a book, like everyone else, obviously. As a kid I used to design my future book cover with childish doodles and Killer Font. Yeah, I did have a thing for melodrama even then. Later on as I tarted reading more and more, buying ONLY book from my internship money for 2 months and getting lectured by mom and dad on finances and financial planning etc, I began to write plot outlines for my book. A girl travelling to Parallel Universe to meet her Dead Dog who was still live int his parallel universe and two sisters travelling the world with a magic purse were some of the ideas. Yeah, I’m not planning to pursue them now, you’re welcome.
But only when I started blogging, did I feel confident about the Book Dream. Blogging gave me a platform to develop my skills, get feedback, gauge the effect of a few different writing techniques, and most importantly –
Blogging gave me my writing style, my voice.
My writing style, my voice – I’m told – is fun.
And I love fun!
I’d be nothing except fun. I want my writing to be as fun and interactive as possible. I want people to enjoy it, even if I write super long posts with little or no focus – it has to be INTERESTING. That is my first and only tip to myself and to anyone who asks me.
And trust me, I get asked a lot. For writing tips, I mean. Ever since the book came out, people always ask for tips to get published and to write. My three tips:
- Keep it Interesting.
- Keep it Interesting, please?
- Keep it interesting dammit!
- My blog has given me amazing friends
- My blog has got me a lot of wins in blogging contests. To count my blogging contest wins from the last 3 months, I won and iPad Air from Blogadda, a Moto E phone and A Micromax Tab from Indiblogger and Vouchers worth almost 12k from various places
- My blog attracts brands too! Yes, only this month I’ve got three really HUGE brands emailing me to blog for them. I will if the theme fits the blog, like I always do, but it’s great nonetheless
- My blog give me a regular medium to write. While book-2 is in a super long editing phase, my only writing vent is this blog and I treat this as the biggest take away. I mean, a girl does need her (creative or otherwise) vent, no?
- And the most important, my blog gave me the confidence to go on and write my first book. (Have you read it yet? No? I can’t believe you. Go read it, GO NOW!)
PS: I still find editing the posts incredibly exhausting, so pliss excuse if there are typos here. Will get back to it soon. Kisses, my readers!