A question I’m often asked in interviews is, “When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?” On its heels comes a related question, “When did you first start writing?” I always answer the second question first. I started writing when I was about six years old. I used to write short stories, little articles on things that interested me — like birds, flowers, and so on. My audience was limited to my parents and my sister, all of them very supportive.
But I didn’t decide to be a writer back then. In fact, I didn’t decide to be a writer until I was in my late twenties. Not because I thought there was anything wrong with being a writer (after all, some of the people I most admire — because I’ve been an unashamed bookworm all my life — have been writers) but because I didn’t know whether I would be able to make a living as a writer. Or where to start.
The problem is that, unlike many other professions, writing can be taught only to a certain extent. You could go through courses on creative writing (alas, still very few and far between in India; nonexistent when I was in school and college); you could write reams and send everything you’ve written to every publisher you can think of, but there was no guarantee that you would get published. Do note that this was back in the days before the Internet, and blogs, and digital publishing on Amazon.
So I put aside any thought of being a writer for the time being, and embarked on a ‘proper’ career. After school I did a course in hotel management and followed it up by working four years with a hospitality company. From there I moved to an advertising agency, where I joined client servicing (which was, considering my hotelier background, an easy fit). But ad agencies have Creative departments, and the head of Creative at the ad agency soon discovered that I had a way with words. So while I officially handled client servicing, I unofficially became the ad agency’s stand-in copywriter when the regular one was on leave.
And that’s how I realised I did have it in me to write, and that people other than relatives believed I could write.
For the next eight years, I continued to work in the corporate world — but always at writing jobs. I worked with a travel website, writing on travel and tourism; I worked with a major IT company, creating training courses for corporate firms, government departments, schools. On the side, at home, I began creative writing once again: short stories, and a novel. And because my confidence had been bolstered by the fact that I was in a job because of my writing skills, I began to send my work out to magazines, newspapers and fiction competitions.
As it happened, I won several short story competitions — including the prestigious Commonwealth Broadcasting Association’s Short Story Competition in 2003. That helped me gain recognition, and credibility. I continued, however, to work at a corporate job for the next five years until, in early 2008, I came to the decision that in order to do justice to my writing I had to give up working full-time. For a while I continued to do freelance assignments (I still take them on but only once in a blue moon), but I concentrated on writing fiction. Today I call myself a full-time writer. I’ve published two collections of short stories and two novels (with another novel due to be published in a few months’ time); I’ve contributed dozens of stories and essays to numerous anthologies, I’ve been published in some of India’s leading newspapers and magazines.
Do I have any regrets that I didn’t start off sooner? None. Because the experiences I’ve been through help me in my writing. And because, all said and done, the joy of working at something I really love is unparalleled.
Madhulika Liddle
liddle.madhulika@gmail.com