From an Aspiring Writer to Author: Lessons I Shared at the Gyansthan Writer’s Festival

 

 Recently, on 19th February 2026 — exactly one week before I turn forty — I had the opportunity to share my journey and insights about pursuing a career in writing with undergraduate literature students at the prestigious Indian Chamber of Commerce in Mumbai.

The topic was deeply personal to me: The Realities of Building a Career in Writing.

Scheduled for a one-hour afternoon session, I arrived prepared with carefully designed PowerPoint presentations, thoughtfully drafted handouts, and a sincere intention to ensure the students left with something meaningful. I didn’t want it to be just another lecture. I wanted it to be a conversation that lingered on in their minds. That was meaningful.

As I entered the room, I was greeted by around thirty bright, eager faces,  young minds filled with curiosity, ambition, and perhaps a little uncertainty. Their energy was infectious. In that moment, I knew this wasn’t about impressing them. It was about being honest with them. That is exactly how I intended the session to be.

I did not speak about overnight success or glamorous breakthroughs. Instead, I spoke about the pivot in my own career path,  how writing was not a straight road for me, but a deliberate shift that required courage, patience, and continuous experimentation. I shared how I had to discover my writing style while working across different corporations, adapting my voice to varied industries, audiences, and expectations.

and how they will have to do so for themselves.

My writing career, I told them, has been built not on talent alone but on discipline, doubt, rejection, and the slow compounding power of persistence. There were days of confidence and days of crippling self-questioning. Some drafts failed, pitches that were rejected, and moments when quitting felt so easy. 

To bring perspective into the room, I used examples from literature and cinema. I referenced works like The Diary of Anne Frank, which began as a deeply personal documentation yet became a landmark in world literature. I referenced novels such as The Book Thief and The Kite Runner — stories that were deeply rooted in human pain, memory, and resilience. I spoke about the books that I had written all through experience, whether it was the car accident I was in, the fondness I had for journalism (both my second and third books) or whether it was about my fondness for cats (my fourth book).

I also discussed films born from powerful writing, including Schindler's List, Parasite, and The Social Network. Each of these works, I emphasised, began with words; with someone choosing to observe, interpret, and articulate a human experience.

In today’s digitised world, one overflowing with reels, algorithms, and AI-generated articles, writing is constantly transforming. However, words still hold an irreplaceable power: the ability to transmit authentic human emotion. No automation can replicate lived experience. No shortcut can substitute vulnerability.

My Journey: Showing Up, Especially When It Was Hard

I shared how my passion for writing truly began when I enrolled in a poetry competition — almost on a whim. Winning an international poetry competition felt like luck at the time. But what followed was not luck; it was consistency. Poem after poem. Draft after draft.

That early encouragement pushed me into experimentation. I explored articles, blogs, SEO content, social media writing, and structured essays. I was, as I told the students, “swimming in the deep end”; testing waters, making mistakes, refining my voice.

Finding one’s voice, I explained, is not a lightning-strike moment. It is a process of deliberate repetition. It is rewriting until the words sound like you. It is choosing authenticity over imitation, and this required a lot of time. 

Discovery, for me, was gradual. Voice emerges when you repeatedly show up — especially on the days when inspiration is absent.

While Writing Is an Art Building A Writing Career Requires Strategy

One of the strongest messages I delivered that afternoon was this:

Writing may be creative, but building a career in writing is entrepreneurial.

Talent can open a door, but discipline keeps it open.

A writing career requires consistent practice; on good days and bad, adaptability across tones, formats, and audiences, strategic thinking about positioning and visibility and even emotional resilience in the face of rejection.

I stressed the importance of editing, ruthless editing. Writing is often rewriting. Sentences must be sharpened. Ideas must be clarified. Excess must be trimmed. The ego must be removed from the page.

Rejections, I told them, are not verdicts. They are filters. They are part of the ecosystem. Every writer encounters them.

Another principle I emphasised: To be a good writer, one must first be a devoted reader — and an observant viewer of stories in all forms. Books, films, conversations, travel, heartbreak, corporate meetings — everything becomes material.

Writing demands vulnerability. It demands endurance. It demands training the mind to think differently for different contexts.

By the end of the session, I distributed my books as well. We conducted a small classroom exercise on why they write. We discussed their ideas openly.

As I left the hall, I felt a quiet warmth; the kind that comes not from applause, but from connection. Encouraging young writers reminded me of my own beginnings: uncertain, hopeful, and willing to leap.

Turning forty next week feels symbolic. It marks not just age, but evolution. From aspiring writer to published author, from doubt to direction, the journey continues.

Because writing is not a destination.

It is a lifelong practice of observing, feeling, refining, and showing up.

And if there is one lesson I hope those students carry forward, it is this: To keep writing. Especially when it feels hard. Especially when no one is watching. That is where the real career begins!