Interview with Arjun Chaudhuri
Our conversation has been jotted below :-
1 When did you first start writing? And how do you take out time from your busy schedule to write and pen down your emotions?
🌺 I have a problem, and that too a major one. I daydream all the time and these dreams bring out constantly evolving stories in my mind. You may say I hallucinate even without getting drunk.
Regarding writing, I started really late after my postgrads in 2014. I never put my thoughts on paper or I would prefer rather drawing pictures than writing. During the phase in 2014, when I used to stay alone in Hyderabad, I had constant thoughts and imaginations flowing through my mind. It was more like breaking free and reaching out to a new world in every possible way. It was then that I decided to take up writing formally. I used to wake up early around 6 and spend two hours daily on writing and placing the words properly. The morning freshness kept me going further. I placed the broken pieces of my random thoughts on a piece of paper and decided to go about creating a story out of it. Thus, started Thanking You with Love...
2 Which book is present on your bedside table right now?
🌺 Mein Kempf by Adolf Hitler
3 What is your favorite genre and why?
🌺 War and Drama. I prefer relating more to realistic aspects and writing about scenes from history or reality. I was always fascinated by the epic, Mahabharata, and may have watched it umpteen times with dialogues of specific scenes running in my mind constantly. My recent fascinations hover around German war movies in World War II and imagining myself in related situations. I prefer reading about great warriors and kings and knowing about them and hence my genre of writing currently had taken a similar course of turn, although my first title was more on a post-college drama.
4 If you look back now, how has the whole experience with BecomeShakespeare.com been?
🌺 It was a great experience with BecomeShakespeare.com and the Wordit Art Fund project which took the second edition of my book and the response from the team and my correspondent was excellent.
And your epitaph would read?
🌺 Explorer of imaginations
5 Who inspired Ashwini and who would be best to star if it is made into a movie or web series adaptation?
🌺 I did imagine this as well during the writing and if its Bollywood, Alia Bhatt should be good to go.
6 What is that one trait that you love about your character?
🌺 Ability to extensively imagine and create caricatures in my mind at a rapid pace.
7 How do you deal with negative criticisms of your work?
🌺 Take the criticisms positively and build on them further to improve.
8 Are you writing your next book?
🌺 Yes, something's coming up though the name remains untold. It is based on World War II and scenes which I have captured during my visit to Morocco a couple of years back.
9 Who is your favorite author and was your inspiration in writing?
🌺 I used to love the fiction stories from writers such as Arvind Adiga or Jhumpa Lahiri as I could relate the reality in their writings more. But for the past few years, I have been obsessed with writings from leaders such as Jack Ma or personal finance experts such as Robert Kiyosaki.
10 What culture do you think is present in the publishing industry that has to be done away with? What will your tip to budding authors?
🌺 Paying too much for distribution and marketing with each value chain and hence commissions eating up too much leaving nothing for a full-time writer.
🖋Tip: Write what you love and what YOU want your story to be, not what others want your story to be. Make a new way and leave a trail so that others can follow you.
🌸🌸🌸
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