- Hi, this is Aditya Bhutra, a chartered accountant who is trying to look at life beyond numbers!
- I hail from Jodhpur, Rajasthan (India), and after completing my CA in 2015, I decided to move to Mumbai (the financial hub of India) for better career opportunities.
- My determination to go the extra mile while working a full-time job led me to hone my writing skills, and eventually I wrote and self-published a love story in the form of a novel titled “Love Beyond Hookup.”
- Here is my story of “why” and “how” I wrote a book and self-published it (despite my friends making fun of my idea).
Rekindling my writing habit after qualifying as a CA
After passing my CA Exams in 2015 and getting settled in a well-paying job, I thought it was my turn to do my bit and guide other CA aspirants in their journey to becoming a Chartered Accountant!
In November 2016, I started engaging with CA students on Quora and answering all their questions!
I was enjoying it so much that I wrote around 10 answers each day and every answer had a word count of almost 1000. That is almost 10,000 words a day!
I don’t know where I was getting the emotions and words, but I continued writing on Quora, and luckily the readers started loving my answers.
Within 10 short days, I became the “Most Viewed Writer on Quora,” and soon after that, the “Top Writer” badge followed. I have garnered around 3 million+ views on my account with 1000+ followers since then.
So what’s Next?
Deciding to write a book while working full time
Somewhere in April 2018, I decided to write on topics beyond California. So, I diversified my writing style and started sharing my views on love, life advice, politics, etc.
I was enjoying writing so much that after almost six months, I thought to myself, “Why not write a book and take my writing skills to another level?”
Finally, in early December 2018, I made up my mind to write a “Short Love Story.”
But how do I do it with a hectic job? The easiest way was to leverage my “travel time”!
Since I work in Mumbai (India), the most convenient mode of transport is the train! The travel time, one way, from home to the office was almost 45 minutes. I used my commute time to pen 21 short love stories!
And that’s how I wrote my book on a local train on my phone. Isn’t bad at all!
What next? Getting rejected by several publishers
After around one month (early February 2019), I decided to publish the same! But how do I find the right publishers?
I was totally clueless, and that’s when I sought the help of the all-knowing Google Aunty!
I did my homework and took the following steps:
- Categories the publishers into three categories: “big,” “medium,” and “small-scale” publishers.
- Thereafter, I noted the name of each publisher in the Excel file along with their email address.
- I used to target two publishers daily and drop them an email along with my sample manuscript, requesting their response on that.
- I sent around 60+ emails in the span of one month, and in response—though it may look weird to you—I got rejected by a majority of the publishers and no one affirmatively responded to my script.
One of the publishers responded with useful insight. His reply was, “Aditya, you have just written a short storybook; had you written a novel, we could have given you a chance!”
Needless to say, I was disappointed, but then I started to think, “Why not write a novel?”
Eventually, I invested another 8 months and completed this book with more than 10 rounds of editing and re-editing.
From waking up at 4 a.m. on a regular basis to several discussions with my publishers, I gave it my all.
Was it easy? Not at all. Because I was so sleep deprived, my eyes were swollen on most days. But worst of all, I was so disconnected from the world!
Rejections were aplenty, but perseverance was unshaken.
For publishing the novel, I tried to approach several authors through social media, but no one was willing to help me.
So, I decided to move on the path alone, with determination as my friend.
I searched on YouTube, took several Udemy writing courses, and read lots of books. Then, taking the cutoff, I made a chapter-wise synopsis to decide what would go in each chapter and how many words there should be in each chapter.
This is how I wrote the first draft, and it took me another 15 days to get to the final draft, which looked ‘near to perfect’ to me.
There is a phrase in the publishing industry: “an unpublished story keeps pestering the author.” It gives you pain until your work is published.
After completing the manuscript of the novel, once again, I was faced with the challenge of getting published. Several rejections and criticisms from my friends who outright said it was not a worthwhile exercise did not deter me. I continued on the road without thinking about the outcome.
As I said earlier, I approached several publishers, but the majority of them rejected the manuscript, and some of them kept it on hold. But I did not believe in false promises and kept looking for other publishers around me. Finally, after considering the time, effort, and confidence I had in my writing abilities, I decided to self-publish the novel.
In Conclusion….
Speaking of my personality, before publishing the novel, I was kind of an impatient guy… I would make decisions without first hearing someone out!
But after publishing my debut novel and constantly being in touch with my writing love, I have become a guy who would rather listen than hear.
I have learned that to grow in life, you need to rein in your thoughts and your emotions. Career-wise, my writing skills help me a lot to draught official emails in a professional manner. People do consult me for fancy words before sending mail. Writing can be a transformational experience!
