- What inspired you to write this particular book, and how did the idea for the story come to you?
Initially there wasn’t really a story in mind. I came home from school one day, it was 2022, and I felt extremely bored. I felt like I wanted to do something and writing a book was something that was always a part of my bucket list. I developed the main parts of the story in my mind, I knew how the book was going to end before I started writing it. It was the other things, like the middle of the book and how certain events would connect together that were figured out through writing. The story basically developed as I was writing the book – to an extent it felt like I was watching my hands type up everything as if they were possessed and the story was writing itself. Now if we are talking about what really created those ‘main parts’ in my head, frankly, I don’t really know. The only thing I knew I wanted was the length of the story – which is supposed to be a lifetime or around a lifetime, and to me that was just because I wanted to praise life, I guess. In terms of inspiration the book draws inspiration from a vast array of sources. I took inspiration from movies (both Western and Indian), I took inspiration from some music albums and even childhood shows. I can’t fully remember which movies, albums or cartoons exactly, because I wrote the book in 2022, so I don’t remember most of the inspirations. In terms of movies, The Godfather (1972), was sort of an inspiration. It is one of my favorite movies ever made. If I ever needed quick inspiration for any creative idea I would go to Netflix, go to The Godfather and pick a random scene for inspiration (usually this would be the Sicily sequence). I also used to listen to scene-specific music while writing. I would listen to movie soundtracks depending on the mood of the scene I was writing. A bit of J. Cole also helped. Going back to what I said about childhood shows, an entire theme in this book (and one of its biggest scenes) was inspired by a single dialogue from Dragon Ball Z. Yeah, so I took inspiration from a lot of things. Basically anything and everything that I thought was a creative source.
- Can you share some insights into your writing process? Do you follow a specific routine or have any unique rituals that help you get into the creative flow?
When I first started writing I had a strict rule of a minimum 500 words a day. I kept writing after the 2022 school year finished and the minimum word count per day kept increasing. By the time of the holidays it was around 1k to 1.5k words, on some days I would write over 2k. I made a strict rule that whatever words I didn’t write on a day, I had to make up for it the next day. So if I wrote 700 on Monday with the minimum being 1k, then on Tuesday I had to write 1.3k. As I previously stated before, I used to listen to background music a lot while writing. It helped me be in the mood for specific scenes. I think the bulk of the book being written near the end of that year was a huge plus point as well, because I had lots of free time to write.
- The characters in your book are quite distinct and memorable. Are they based on real people, or did they evolve purely from your imagination?
None of the characters were based off of real people, they were all created purely through imagination. I mean there was a scene with a specific character who plays basketball, and that scene was sort of inspired by a Kobe Bryant interview, but apart from that there weren’t any real life inspirations. I just made everybody up.
- Your book delves into a specific theme ? What motivated you to explore this theme, and what messages or discussions do you hope readers will take away from your work?
The book delves into a lot of themes I feel like, but the main ones are probably materialism and change. I wanted to talk about materialism because I felt and still feel strongly about it. I don’t really believe that materialist values contribute to a happy life and I wanted to show this through the book. I didn’t want it to be a big part because I wanted the story itself to be the main spotlight, but I tried to incorporate materialism (or a specific hate for materialist values if you could say that) into the book in way where it could clearly be seen and didn’t need analyzing, but it also wasn’t too strong. Perhaps the biggest, most prominent theme in this book is change. It’s a story of a human life, and no human progresses through life without going through constant change. The idea of change came both naturally through the story (because as I said before it’s a life story and it’s simply not possible for anyone to stay the same) and was also done purposefully. If you read the book, you will see that the first 5 chapters and the last 5 chapters are mirror images of each other. Chapter 5 mirrors Chapter 6 and Chapter 3 mirrors Chapter 8. The events in those chapters are the complete opposites of each other, this was one way I tried to show change. I hope through this book readers are able to grasp the constantly changing and impermanent nature of human life.
- The world-building in your novel is incredibly rich and immersive. How did you go about creating the setting, and did you draw inspiration from any real-world locations or historical events?
For settings I would just draw inspiration from things that I saw outside. Big settings, like a neighborhood or a city were inspired by the real world. The smaller settings like personal houses, were all created through imagination.
- As a writer, how do you balance the need for originality with the expectations of the genre? Were there any challenges in putting your unique spin on familiar elements?
I didn’t really think much about this when I was writing. In terms of genre the book dives into everything. It is mostly a drama, but it also has some comedic elements, some romantic elements, some crime. I didn’t really think about genre or anything, I just tried to incorporate all the elements that a person could experience in their own life. I think the way to be original is to just do stuff without thinking or worrying whether it will work or not. I didn’t really think much about genre or audience expectations while writing this book, I just did it.
- The pacing of the story is well-crafted, keeping readers engaged from start to finish. Can you share your approach to maintaining tension and momentum throughout the narrative?
My approach to pacing was easing into or slowly writing towards big events. I tried my best to not force events to occur too quickly or too slowly in the story. I tried to write in a way where these events in the story would flow into each other and feel natural. Another thing that helped was the ‘skips’ or ‘cuts’ in the chapters, these definitely helped with the pacing as they removed any need for unwanted filler. Also I think the use of timeskips in the story was also good for pacing. It also helped deliver the theme of change and made the entire story just better.
- In the age of rapidly changing media and reader preferences, how do you see the role of traditional storytelling evolving, and how do you adapt your writing to connect with contemporary audiences?
I can’t really say much about books, but as I’ve been seeing recent Indian movies, I feel like the storytelling is shifting towards a softer tone of drama, the stories being told are shifting to a more personal, intimate kind of area. You could even say therapeutic towards themselves (for example Indian movies like Jersey (2019) or this year’s Meiyazhagan (they’re both bangers)). I mean even other types of media nowadays are falling into this, I wouldn’t say trend, but cultural change in creative expression, like music albums and stuff. I don’t believe my book is as intimate in terms of characters and character relationships as some of the media that has been released from 2018 onwards. Maybe this is because I wasn’t able to see this change at the time of writing. But I do feel like if I were to make a piece of media after this book, I would try to revolve it around this new wave. As I said previously, I didn’t really think much about audience expectations when writing. So I wasn’t really trying to adapt the writing to a given audience. I just wrote whatever I felt was needed for the story.
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