Q.1 Tell us a little about yourself? Perhaps something not many people know?
A. I am Nrupal Das. I am passionate about technology, traveling, and sports. I am a technology entrepreneur having founded two startups.
If I start an interesting book I feel compelled to complete that in one go. I have missed classes, family get-togethers, office meetings to complete books.
Q.2 How many unpublished and half-finished book do you have?
A. I have 6 half finished books at various stages of completion.
Q.3 Where do you get your ideas?
A. An incident or something unusual stays with me and it germinates into an idea of a short story or a novel. Sometimes it is things that happened and sometimes it did not happen. I get ideas from very mundane things, though they look very different when drafted on paper.
Q.4 What advice do you have for writers?
A. Am I qualified to give advice to writers? People should learn from masters, I am still a student.
I can share what has helped me to improve and keep going. I enjoy the process of writing and that is its own reward. I understand marketing your work, and sometimes being visible is essential for your work. However, nothing else will matter if you cannot write good stories or non-fiction. So, the most important steps are to constantly improve your craft.
I have been pathetic at self-editing, so I am focusing myself to edit my drafts and make it better before I share it with external editors or reviewers.
It is a difficult ask for most of us – to fall in love with your own writing and then be the biggest critic of your own writing. Yet there is no escape from this. It may not sound straight but I have learned that the best to improve your writing is to become a good editor of your own work.
After drafting my work, I leave it for many days and then return to it as an editor. The freshness of draft is gone, and so are the protective instincts of an author.
Q.5 Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?
A. I try to be original, no doubts about that. I have tried to write one book long back thinking that people will love it since that is kind of ‘happening’ at that moment. I couldn’t bring myself to complete that work, and from that day onwards I have kept away from current trends, and all. I write what I really enjoy writing.
Q.6 If you could tell your younger writing self-anything, what would it be?
A. Write fearlessly what truly inspires you, be original. Focus on editing your drafts, as many times as you can.
Q.7 What are the most important magazines or websites for writers to subscribe to?
A. Goodreads, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Harper’s Magazine, and Online websites which let you buy paperbacks or eBooks for reading. I always say this to myself, if you learn from the best you have a better chance to become good.
Q.8 What is the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex?
A. Internalizing their emotions.
Q.9 How do you select the names of your characters?
A. This is one of the most difficult things for me. I wonder about writers whom I admire, they often come up with such wonderful, and memorable names.
I struggle a lot with this one. Looking for answers myself. Sometimes I pick out of memory, combine names, or find a name that resembles the characteristics of a character.
Q.10 Do you read your book reviews? How do you deal with bad or good ones?
A. Yes, I read my book reviews. Good ones make my day.
The bad ones can be categorized into two categories. One which states that you have written a bad story, and it is bad because of XYZ reasons. I love these reviews. I thank these reviewers for taking time to not only read my story but write a thoughtful review.
In the second category, the reviews are very vague giving no scope to understand what can be improved or what exactly they did not like about your piece. In some cases, reviewers are very rude and attack the author personally.
One cannot do anything but ignore them.
Q.11 Does your family support your career as a writer?
A. Writing is my passion, and it is still not my career so till now they have been very supportive. If at all I tell them that I intend to earn my bread and butter by writing, then it would be a different matter altogether.
Q.12 What do your fans mean to you?
A. They are my friends whom I have not met. I love them. They mean a lot to me.
Q.13 How many books have you written? Which is your favorite?
A. I have published three books till now and my collection of short stories – Fate and Fortune is my favorite.
Q.14 Do you have any unique and quirky writing habits?
A. No, I do not have any unique writing habits.
Q.15 What do you consider to be your best accomplishment?
A. I was one of the finalists in KDP short story contest. I had received two very well written emails by my readers, telling how they felt when they completed my story. I think getting those emails was my best accomplishments.
Q.16 What is the most unethical practice in the publishing industry?
A. I am at the very fringe of the publishing industry, I am not personally aware of any unethical practice.
Q.17 Who edited your book and how did you select him/her?
A. I have two close friends, who act as my editors. One of them is a very widely read person. He has been a bibliophile from his childhood, and his understanding of technical aspects of storytelling is very good.
The other friend is very disciplined and objective about his assessment. Both are very direct in their criticism of my work, and I love them for that.
Q.18 Which famous person, living or dead would you like to meet and why?
A. I would like to meet Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes singularly pushed me to read stories in my childhood. It would be something to meet Sherlock Holmes if indeed he would have existed.
Q.19 What is your favorite book and why?
A. I don’t have a single favorite book. I feel conflicted to choose one single book as my favorite, as a mother might face while choosing her favorite child.
When I was young and naïve as a school kid studying in class 6th or 7th, I had read ‘The Treasure Island’ and ‘The hound of Baskervilles’. Both left lasting impressions on me.
One left me thinking about seas and pirates for days, and night. It led me to imagine about blue skies, emerald green waters, and tiny islands in distant seas. I had never seen an island at that point, I had never seen a ship back then, but I felt as if I have seen them.
RL Stevenson through his book introduced me to the power of the human imagination.
Then came Sherlock Holmes trying to solve murders of Baskerville family. I knew the book is a work of fiction, but my heart fluttered when I was on certain pages. I could feel excitement, fear, sympathy just by reading. That was something that had not happened earlier. It has stayed with me.
I looked differently at large dogs thinking how the hound of Baskervilles would look if it visited our colony. Will such a large hound scare away all the stray dogs of my colony? Fountainhead, Godfather, Man-Easters of Kumaon, A day of the Jackal and so many others remain with me.
Q.20 How can readers discover more about you and your work?
A. Readers can follow me on any of the below mentioned social media handles to discover about me and my work.
Twitter - https://twitter.com/nrupaldas
Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/nrupal
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/das.nrupal/
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