Listen to the podcast here: Here
Guest: Manali Desai – Published Poet, award-winning and best-selling author, editor, blogger, freelance writer.
About Manali
-She has published 3 books so far out of which 2 were best-sellers, she has also been a part of two anthologies, one of which is titled “10 tales”.
-She started writing since she was 12, she started writing professionally when she was 25.
-She was an avid reader, that’s one of the reason she started writing.
-She took a marketing executive job, but that didn’t satisfy her. But, a part of job description was content writing that’s how she found out that she can write professionally.
What are Manali’s published books about?
-The debut book “The rustic mind” is a collection of poems, it has about 30-32 poems of different genre.
-The second book “The untold stories” is a collection of micro tales (A genre which tells a story in half-page) of various genres. It became a bestseller on Amazon in May 2020,
-The third book which recently launched in July 2020, the good thing about this book was it became a restless in less that 24 hours of the launch.
Procedure to sit and write.
-There’s no procedure per se, but Manali has this schedule where she write 2000 words on a daily basis and reads around 200 pages, but there are days when she can’t get it done.
-Even if you aren’t able to do that, you should have a balance between reading and writing, if you can’t write on a particular day, make sure you read.
-Manali reads all kinds of genres, she recently has been reading books by Indian authors.
-She writes everything digitally.
-She uses Google keep app to write on phone and laptop.
-She is a one person team, she manages all her blogs and social media handles.
How did you publish?
-First two books are traditionally published, but the recent one was published through KDP (Kindle direct publishing).
-The easiest way to publish is KDP, they are very responsive.
Reading preference
-Manali used to read through paperbacks, and still has a soft corner for them but she recently switched to kindle, it’s easy to carry, to look up the meaning of word, its user friendly.
Advise to young writers.
-To maintain a writing habit, you’ve to maintain the reading habit, in order to be a good writer, you need to be a good reader, read about 2-3 books a month, also focus on the quality books you’re reading. The type of writing that you want to do, read books related to that.
-Besides that, having a schedule is important.
Future in writing field
-People aren’t reading as they used to, there’s a decline. When she was writing her second book, she noticed that people aren’t reading longer texts, that’s when she came up with the idea of writing micro tales.
-Saying most of the stuff in few words is the future.
-Reading isn’t dead.
Top 5 tips for aspiring writers.
- Don’t stop believing in your writing.
- Have a schedule, try to write everyday. If you can’t write, read.
- Have a schedule to try different forms of writing.
- Don’t focus on one part of your profession, engage in different activities.
- Believe in yourself. Be self-motivated.
Chirag Barjatya 