Well, I am definitely qualified to write about that since I have had a long experience as a wannabe author – ever since I penned a mushy love poem for a cute girl in seventh grade in Chandigarh, and never actually marshaled enough courage to show it to her.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had thrust my first love letter scrawled hastily on a ruled paper into her crayon-coloured hands…? (a) She’d have blushed, smiled, and asked me if I believe in family planning (b) She’d have flushed, turned crimson with anger, and reported me to that lady principal with that horrendous wig (c) She’d have pulled me into a corner and asked me if I believed in protection, pills, and post-pregnancy chivalry (d) She’d have screamed at the literary equivalent of child abuse.

Well, since (d) was the most likely scenario, considering that she usually looked at me like a zoologist would look at a new mutant species of Periplanata Americana (that’s the official handle of any cockroach, dumbo, since you are from illiterate Bhatinda) I tore the love poem into a million shreds and eternally fractured my romantic confidence in the process. (Explains why I am still single?)

The wariness continues I guess – it’s some kind of in-built hardware that I inherited somewhere on a cosmic assembly line that churns out models upon queer models of carbon-based lifeforms every year – and so I have never been able to marshal enough courage to send all that I have ever written to publishers. So that means a huge bank of forty-three unsent manuscripts on my laptop and a whole heap of ideas that I trash every year.

Wrong thing to do. If you wish to get published, and if you are serious about seeing your name in print on at least one book, then please take my egoistic suggestions seriously – hey, hey, just kidding… I am the most humble person in the universe; and I bet you fifty euros that I can out-compete anyone when it comes to sheer humility.

1. Send anything you write. Yes, everything apart from that grocery list you made last weekend is great literature.

You never know when you will hit pay dirt; and with which literary dispatch. I first started writing to the dailies: middles, supposedly humorous pieces, features, poems, whatever – and when I got rejected by the A-grade dailies, I’d send the same to the B-grade and C-grade dailies which would lap it up. That funded my stay in a med school that served worse grub than Auschwitz.

My dad had said that he’d only send me five hundred measly bucks every month (not because he couldn’t afford to send more, but because he felt that I should learn to fend for myself.)

He told me one day in Delhi, when I had complained that the mess bill itself was close to four hundred bucks, that I was behaving like a wailing wimp and not like a literary lion.

“Find a way to generate money with any talent you might have, for instance you could write articles for newspapers and magazines – if I keep spoon-feeding you, then you’ll never discover anything about yourself…”

That got my goat, and I swore that I will never again touch him for extra cash. I never did actually, and there was no need to, though he was generous enough to gift me a scooter quite early, and even suggested that he could buy me a car if I wished to have one.

“But money I won’t give you. I can buy you anything, but you generate the liquid cash yourself. Be a man. Be bold, be brave, and the world will never be able to rule you. Rule or be ruled. Remember that simple eternal rule,” he said one night.

It is only because of what he said (and made me do in med school) that made me what I am today.

A bit of a writer.

I will be eternally thankful to my Dad, who left on a brief vacation to Vaikuntha in November 2005, and hasn’t returned ever since – not surprising since such irreversible travels along the cosmic highways only come with a visa for an onward journey…

Anyway, coming back to my pompously humble suggestions…

Hone your skills by writing, writing, writing; and reading, reading, reading of course. There are no short cuts. (Change your dad or anyone else who says anything to the contrary.)

Write mails, blogs, messages (no, no, forget texting on your cell – th way flks r manglng englsh on thr cells is bth slly nd crmnl; ok, ok, let me translate that for you since you just migrated from Burundi. I said the way folks are mangling english on their cells is both silly and criminal).

Write a diary, personal notes (prescriptions don’t count here, since most of my buddies are doctors now, so I must make things amply clear) and keep an ideas pad close at hand always. You never know when you might see a crazy dream or nightmare and that might be just the kind of intellectual trigger you’d been waiting for.

We all have a story to tell. We all have something to share. We all have what it takes to be a good author.

2. So what exactly characterises a good author?

Simple. A good author is just someone who has the hide of a hippo; the ego of an E.coli bacilli; the vigour of a volcano; the imagination of an insane person; and above all, the staying power of a shameless leech.

You gotta send your MS (manuscript is never called manuscript in publishing or editorial circles, all industries have their own jargon, don’t they?) to literary agents if you wish to rope in a publisher from abroad (no international publisher likes to be directly contacted by a wannabe author, you have to move through an agent, easily sourced on the net); or directly to some publishers in India if you feel your work is more for a pan-Indian audience because it is packed with Hinglish and Hindi and the Indian sociocultural milieu – like my forthcoming novel is…

Warning # 1: If you send hundred email queries after drafting a neat query letter (will tell you all about it as we chug along these pages during the course of the coming years) chances are you will get a reply from only two or three.

Warning # 2: Four out these two or three replies will be rejection letters (and I am not kidding.)

Warning # 3: Ok, ok, I overdid that a bit – maybe one agent out of these two or three will ask for a synopsis (a one-page single-spaced summary of your book, with plot outlines, twists, and ending of course) and maybe three random sample chapters.

Warning # 4: After you joyously send the masterly synopsis and mouth-watering sample chapters, you will have to wait for a few more weeks.

Warning # 5: “The plot is promising, but this is not for me…” Groan. “Nice story, but I am not sufficiently enthused to take it up now, best of luck with another agent…” Sigh. “We apologise for this form letter, but since we get so many submissions, we can’t reply individually to each and every one of them. Our team evaluated the potential of your submission and reached the wise conclusion that it is not something we are currently looking for rather wisely.” Wince. “You write well, but I couldn’t convince myself to represent you on this book.” AAAARRRGH! “I can’t take it, but that doesn’t mean your work isn’t good – opinions vary in the industry and what I might not be interested in might turn out to be a bestseller, so keep trying with other agents.” Sleep.

Like I said, a thick hide is a must. If you are one of those who can’t take a ‘no’ for an answer, forget becoming an author. The world’s best writers have got rejected more times than there are galaxies in our universe. The world’s greatest bestsellers and cult books have been rejected by millions of publishers. The authors didn’t give up. The authors kept knocking on newer doors. The authors had hippo hides…

(To be continued)