Exclusive | Keep honing your writing skills: Rishabh Chaturvedi

Litizen.com, an online meeting point for short story writers and the Mumbai Writers Group recently launched a book. Titled, ‘The Labyrinth’, the book is an interesting compilation of fifteen short stories by ten prolific authors.

 

Adgully caught up with chartered accountant turned author Rishabh Chaturvedi as he reveals interesting insights into “The Labyrinth.”

 

Talking about how the book came about, Rishabh said, “About a year and two months back, I created this group of writers called ‘The Mumbai Storyboard Writers Group’ on a website called Meetup.com. Gradually, people started joining the group. The group meetings were held fortnightly and we discussed our writing styles, stories etc. That was the main agenda. Eventually, we created Litizen.com, because we realized that once we put these stories online we would have a larger viewership. Interestingly, when we would meet, we would read the stories and come, thus making the process easier. Eventually people across the world who could not attend the meet, would send in their stories and I would upload them on the blog. This paved the way for a blog which was exclusively for short stories.”

 

Rishabh adds, “We did not edit the stories on the blog because we wanted people to get feedback for their real writing. This continued for about six months. Six months back, we started receiving a lot of good content .This made us believe that there was a possibility of publishing a book. Last six months we worked on editing the stories, compiling them and getting them proofread.”

 

Speaking about the integration of the online writing forum to the real world, he said, “Every author wants feedback. We are working on developing Litizen.com in a form where authors can upload their stories directly thus enabling them to create their own communities area wise. It is still in the pipeline. Once we achieve this purpose, all the meet- up groups would be polarized. This will address the issue of being in different locations and not being able to meet up. Technology is in a way going to help us get people physically together.”

 

The criteria for selecting the short stories that have been featured in “The Labyrinth” was specifically that the stories should be entertaining revealed Rishabh. “The USP of the book is you won’t get bored reading it, because it has no single genre. It has multiple genres, so you don’t know what to expect next. That was the idea in mind, when we compiled the stories. We had a panel of authors who would check whether the stories were gripping and entertaining. The stories that got the maximum votes would be selected.  Thus, the entire process was crowd-sourced. We ran campaigns on Facebook too,” he exclaimed.

 

He believes that the sales of the book would depend on word of mouth publicity and how aware people are of the book. As of now, he is extremely happy with the way the book has launched.

 

When quizzed about promotional tie-ups for the book, he said, “We had a tie-up with Flipkart which helped us get the book amidst readers. Most importantly, it helped us in garnering visibility, but other than that we have had no tie-ups.”

 

Rishabh expressed his heartfelt gratitude to eminent author Shobhaa De who he states has been a constant mentor in the process of bringing out Labyrinth.

 

Coming from a finance background, and taking up writing is in no manner a cakewalk. It requires constant precision. Rishabh says, “I did face certain challenges when I started writing five years back. Once you are pre- active in writing, it works out.  Now, the only challenge is coming up with an idea which I believe is the most pertinent challenge that every author faces.”

 

His favourite genre is horror and his favourite author is Stephen King.

 

Rishabh urges budding writers to read a lot. He believes that the more you read, the more it goes into your sub-conscious mind; and the better you end up writing. Also he advises them to write a lot, because the more they write, the better they would keep getting at the art of writing. “Don’t let rejections or criticism deter you. Just keep going and keep honing your writing skills.” are his words of advice to aspiring authors.

 

On an end note, he says, “A lot of people are taking up writing as a profession today. Similarly, the readership is also tremendously increasing. Once, people start reading, they graduate on to better literature. I believe literature has a bright future ahead.”