Author Spotlight | Ashutosh
Here at Olympia, we love hearing from our authors, getting an insight into their lives in writing and asking them what their advice would be to future authors. This week we had the pleasure of interviewing Parimi Ashutosh about their book!
1. Hold old were you when you first wrote something substantial?
When I was, maybe 11 years old, we had this dumb competition called ‘future writers’ at our school. I wrote a page and half tale in an hour called as the ‘red-tale’, a conceptual thing written with as many ‘red’ affiliated objects and stuff I could. But later I realised that the teacher-pets were decided to be winners even before the whole stuff commenced. Now, who is a real published author? Me! Wassup! Those teacher-pets are now artless and worthless. Anyway, I was on a hiatus for the next six years, and if raps count as writing, well, 17-18 yrs old. I wrote an album with 10 songs, which is now a scrapped work. Then 19-20 region, I wrote my first book titled ‘Els Orfés pt.1’. After I am done with that, I started writing this book, Vida. Plus, I am also a theoretician (researcher in quantum chemical-physics), so I keep writing research articles every now and then, with 3 international publications in peer-viewed journals, and 3 international conference papers to my name till now. Writing is always a part of my life, and everything I write is substantial, even stuff like the grocery list for the month.
2. Did you ever have aspirations to become a writer?
Zero. Or as they say in Spanish, cero. Or as we theoreticians say, null. No probability. The only thing I imagined I’d become is a sort of scientist or a researcher, which I am now. But, writer, meh. Yet here I am now. The funny part is that the people who know about me are now like ‘WHAT!’. Because everyone knows that I am more of a science-logic guy than an art-emotion guy.
3. What is the best piece of advice you’ve received?
Generally, I am the one who gives advice to people, and no one has ever even dared to advise me as I would not only listen but would also obliterate them with my replies. So, I never received any sort of advice, and even if I did; I won’t listen. However, the philosophy which I follow is always ‘Keep it real!’.
4. What advice would you give to an aspiring writer?
The first part is, if you want to be a writer, focus, perfection, and discipline are the three ingredients which you should have. Imagination is not necessarily a tool, as long as you stick to the mantra ‘reporting my thoughts’. If you don’t want to be a writer, and if you don’t push yourself to be a writer, none will do. So, stay focused, be disciplined, keep it perfect, and learn a lot of words to play with. Plus, if you don’t aim to be the best, don’t even start.
Second, you would need patience and perseverance through this publishing-shizzle. This whole publishing is stuff about ‘selling the product’. You have to be patient, perseverant, and stick to your views about your book. Publishers don’t care about your book as much as you do. It is your baby, so you have to make it best from your end.
Third, don’t let the status of ‘author’ get to your head, and eat your time and focus. You are always a beginner every time you begin to write. So, be humble and sit down. Keep writing, as long as you can.
Four, challenge yourself. What good is a thing that isn’t challenging?
5. What did you find easiest and hardest about writing?
‘Easy’ and ‘hard’, as we people in science say, are relative terms. Everything is easy if you love, and everything is hard if you don’t love. But, relating to the common folk, the hard part for me to write is, to etch emotion into the book. Because, I am the dude of logic, and I find it quite tough to understand why people choose to be emotional and such. Especially terms like, ‘happiness’, ‘love’, ‘kindness’, ‘jealousy’, etc are all out of my brain. So, to impart these qualities to my characters, against my character was kind of tough, and I had to experiment on myself to ‘feel’ and write. Real experiments, and to kids: don’t try them at home. The easy part is that I got to flaunt my linguistic skills, thoughts, and wordplay.
6. Was it faster to write your book or to have it published?
It is always faster to write than to get it published. Because to write is in my hands. And it is completely dependent on me. But to get it published is in the hands of somebody else. I can’t influence them against their schedules and stuff, because that is stupid to do, and I don’t do stupid things.
7. What was your favourite part of your book to write?
Everything is kind of my favourite. I wrote it. So, that is obvious. But specifically, designing the characters, choosing the words which fit their attitude, and the whole Portugués-English translation is kinda cool in my perspective. A lot of folks liked it, especially the way I designed the character ‘Issy’. They all are ‘Issy-fiends’ now. Also, I think the amount of perfection in the book would blow anyone’s mind. So, even that’s a fav. But I wonder how many can get the entendres I trapped in the craft.
8. Do you have any plans to publish more work?
Mos def. Yeah. Mathematically, I should be up with my next work in another 4 months. That is going to be a banger because it is kind of taken from my very own life. Other works, which I am parallelly working would take a little more time. The next projects, in my words, would be much more addictive, ruthless, and perfect than what Vida is.
9. If you could review Olympia Publishers in just a few words, what would they be?
The whole of Olympia firm is like, a Monday which is better than a Saturday-night. You generally don’t expect such goodness from people of such order. Other firms, as far as I know, are kind of, *d-word*. But it is not a case with the Olympians. They are humble, helping, and hardworking. Added to that, I love their consistent congruent contemplative communicative-skills. As a firm, one should be able to communicate and understand the author’s view in an effective and positive manner. They are really good in that area. As long as they are maintaining these skills, they’d remain the best.
