An excerpt from my book- 'How to write a book in 8 days.'

"I'm writing a book," I told my friends and family in 1999. That one single sentence brought me instant admiration. They would all look at me with respect and appreciation, in the same way as one does when one speaks of their favorite authors.

I had decided to write a book that year. I had even put up some pictures on my vision board to bring life into my dreams. I still remember. It was the picture of a man with a procession of people running behind him (I couldn't find a picture of a woman with a large following, so the one with the man went up on my dream board. And destiny has a rude way of presenting reality. I have lost count of the number of times I have been called 'Sir'.). I wrote above it: 'International Bestseller' 'Bestselling Author' 'Priya Kumar'.

It was perfect. The decision was made. The dream was set. But the book wasn't written for the next decade.

The funny thing about your dreams is that you may forget, but if you had made a public declaration about it, people will remind you of it with sadistic pleasure. It's like you make a public declaration, such as 'I will buy a BMW next year', and when people see you jerk into the driveway in your blue Santro the year after, they sincerely ask you with camouflaged delight, "What happened to the BMW you were supposed to buy?", making you apologetic about your own dreams.

I would often bump into people who had attended my workshops-where my introduction sheet had carried the sentence: "And, she is also writing her first book!" I remember that the audience would quickly warm up to me in admiration. Authors have that kind of reverence, even the ones that are still working on their first book. I used to be so annoyed that they remembered that I was writing a book. Why do people have to forget their own dreams and remember other people's dreams? They would eagerly ask me if my book was completed or if it was released. Some would even say that they had called bookstores to ask for a book by Priya Kumar and there was none.

My very apologetic reply to them was: "Oh, I am still writing it." And guess what? It was an acceptable statement. The longer it takes to write the book, apparently the more care and more wisdom there is going into it; that's what the norm says. It takes years to write a book. Everyone knows that, thank God for that.

The truth? Ten years after continuously saying, "I am writing a book", I had actually not written a word. A word and a paragraph maybe, sometimes even a couple of random pages here and there, but nothing that moved or had the capacity to move in the direction of a book. That was the truth.

Anyone who has thought of writing a book and ever given that a shot will feel for me when I say this-I really wanted to write a book. I would often sit at my desk, sometimes even for hours, but the idea on what to write, where to begin, how to put into words the half thought through thoughts I had-it just wouldn't happen. The pages of my notebooks stayed blank, day after day. The 'sitting down to write' gaps became longer and longer. Months later, sometimes I would return home after a reminder from someone and stare helplessly at my notebook, clueless about how to begin and what to write.

And then there were days where I would write a page or two and when I would return to my desk with a cup of tea to pen down more, I'd find that the ones I had written minutes ago, wouldn't make sense to me anymore.

There were so many nights where I would have this brilliant idea for a book, and I would even scribble it out in my bedside notebook, and then when I would discuss that brilliant idea with a friend the next day, they would either not get it, or give me references to a similar book they had read or a film they had seen, rendering my concept incomprehensible, stale, or worse, useless.

Oh, then there were times where I thought it would be easier to interview a few celebrities and put a book together about their lives. That way, the idea would already be given to me; all I had to do was write it.

I even contacted about fifteen-odd celebrities in the year 2000. I went to meet Shekhar Suman; at that time he had the hit show on TV, Movers and Shakers. I met with Anupam Kher. I wrote many letters to Amitabh Bachhan but didn't get a response. I met with Hritik Roshan, Aishwarya Rai, Karishma Kapoor, Shiamak Davar and many others. I even met Dilip Chhabria, the car designer. I met journalists, fashion designers, musicians and even a few businessmen. I had collected a lot of ideas. But what I had failed to realize is, that while I had no dearth of content to start with, I had no clue about the process of writing. So that project failed. Luckily, none of the celebrities followed up their talks with me asking what I had done, and so I had no pressure of accountability.

A decade went by.

By now, I had closed the 'chapter' of my being an author, and in changing houses three times, the vision board with all my dreams of being a bestselling author, creating international bestsellers, had been trashed too.

When people would ask me things like: "Oh what happened to the book you were writing?" I sugar-coated my defeat by saying, "It's on hold at the moment!"

And over the years, I genuinely forgot about it.

I tell you all this, because as I sit and type these words, tears roll out of my eyes, because I was born to be a writer-to write and to inspire. To uplift through my stories, is my purpose, it is my calling. I was meant to be a writer. That is my life's purpose.

Only I didn't know it.

'How to Write a Book in 8 Days' has won 2 International Awards, and is sure to make a difference in your life if writing a book is one of your goals. :)