How Did I Get the Idea of Writing My 1st Book – Journeys Beyond and Within…
My first book has come out. Today I want to talk about how I got the idea of writing a travel memoir while I was traveling with my partner in our car with all our stuff in it (now four years and counting).
When I started writing the book at the beginning of 2022, I had been on the road for a year and a quarter. My partner and I were moving quickly in our car in the south of India.
Our experiences had already been colorful. We began the road trip with COVID-19 catching my partner’s parents, both of them. One recovered at home while the other had to get admitted. We had planned to get on the road – this was our plan despite COVID because I could work from anywhere and my partner had a remote job. But the second wave of the pandemic had surged right then (March 2021). By then, we had given up our apartment.
For us, it was both easy and hard. As it was just the rise of the wave, we could move. Slowly, traveling even interstate became hard. We were on a long-distance trip; ideally, we were permitted to drive on the highway without any interruptions. The legal advisory allowed a car’s interstate movement, especially those like us who were in Mumbai just to be near my partner’s parents. But police harassed us at stops. We gave the Mumbai cops the parents’ medical reports but they wanted cash so we gave cash.
Further on, the visit to my parents’ home was complicated. We didn’t leave home, ate separately from my parents whom we were seeing for the first time in a year and a half, and to enter Himachal Pradesh, the home of the Himalayas, we had to get swab tests done which we got collected from their garden.
It was May 2021 when we finally reached Himachal and officially on our indefinite road trip in India. We had no home to go back to. Our bags were in our car. We named them: books bag, utensil bag, bedding bag, laptop bags, shoe bags, spice bag, and fun bag. How innovative!
The next four months in the mountain state were incredible, adventurous, and more amazing than I could imagine. Yes, there were the initial issues of getting used to the lifestyle, having to find places to stay one after the other, working on the go, writing every day about the adventures I was having every day, buying groceries from a different store, finding the shops, making it within the lockdown open time, sleeping in varied beds, being patient enough to wait with all the mountain trails around me until I could physically explore them all, coordinating with all sorts of people I couldn’t have imagined, and listening to the horrid news from my family, India, and around the world.
But the beauty, the sheer raw natural beauty, the clean cool air, the shining green pine and deodar trees, the birds so vivid and deeply colored as if they had all taken a bath just then and dipped in fresh paint again took my breath away. The cries of the flying squirrels, the anxious fox, and the shy stouts enthralled us. There were lakes, rivers, and streams so powerful, transparent, and refreshing as if I had never understood water before. The sky was a deeper blue and more encompassing than ever. Though our stable home before was on a rooftop next to a jungle (yes inside the busy city of Bangalore; you can see some photos of the rooftop here) and I had an open sky above me on most days and feasted my eyes on the bulbous sun and moon every morning and evening, this, this bright mountain sky was another bewitchment.
The earth lay open until the end of the world, green as in green of the moss, fresh as in fresh of the lemon, I couldn’t get enough of it.
After four months of constant hiking and trekking and other mind-blowing adventures in the Himalayas (a lot of which I have narrated on the blog), we descended back down to my parent’s house again for a quick visit and then onwards to the south of India. Why not the Central or the East or the West? We did pass the west, so through Rajasthan and Maharashtra but I think we went to the South because our heart was still in the South. After living in Karnataka on and off for so many years, my partner and I both wanted to head back to the known familiarity of the south to be a bit more stable and focus on work. But to say the South is like saying the Arctic Ocean. The south of India is big, varied, and multi-lingual. This time we reached Pondicherry, the coastal city, where we stayed for eleven months. Even I didn’t know the duration until I calculated it now.
In Pondicherry, we put up in multiple areas, in a variety of homes, and enjoyed myriads of things. Next to a beach, inside a deep forest, and connected to the world, we lived in all ways. Bicycling, walking, running, and driving a moped, all were our preferred methods to shop and do and be. We cooked our food, went green sometimes, other times fishy, and the moon was our constant companion. What a thrilling time! For months, we lived in a jungle hut where we didn’t have running water or a big light, our open squat toilet was outdoors in the forest, a cold open shower treated us every morning, and where our biggest concern was “Have we put all bricks in place else the big fat rat will sneak in?” Until the concern became “Take the torch, the snake (or scorpion) might still be there.” If one morning we were ordering lobster online, the next morning we were in the market ourselves, eyeing the baskets over-spilling fish. If one day was running one hour on mud trails the other was cycling without a map without knowing where we were heading.
Pondicherry was all kinds of mad. It was a gravy-like thickly-rich experience, especially because with all the fun and adventures there was a lot of struggle, haggling, dishonest people, judgment, heat and rain, chaos and quiet. It was all of it.
It was in Pondicherry when I got an email from a publisher who wrote,
“I am an associate editor at __ world’s largest publishing house. We recently came across your blog, On My Canvas, and were immediately intrigued by your extraordinary and interesting adventures across the world.
We would absolutely love it if you would agree to writing a book based on your experiences, lessons you have learnt on your travels – and continue to do so – and how these experiences have helped you in your personal growth.
As we publish non-fiction titles, …, we think you’d be a great addition to our publishing list.”
I reread the email, a cheery satisfaction spreading through me and lifting me into the air, my feet a foot above the earth.
So my two niches can be combined? Since the beginning of my blog, which I call a personal growth and travel blog, I have worried about my niche. They said to survive in the creator world you need a niche. Every video on blogging success, every meetup, and every influencer talked about niche.
Frankly, I neither knew anything about an influencer nor niche. How could I restrict myself to one theme? I had left everything behind to write to write only about one thing? And what would that one thing be? What could it be when I am interested in forests, stars, travel, people, paintings, pandas, colors, families, relationships, growth, schedules, chaos, working hard, dancing hard, designs, fonts, food, ingredients, tomatoes, textiles, touch? What?
I am a curious person. At a time, I am working on and thinking about many themes. When I wrote articles such as “How to ask out a man,” I countered them with how to win a bad day, and when done with that, I moved onto lone travel days in Thailand. When I published text-heavy pieces such as everything I have learned, I followed them up with my favorite quotes and picture diaries of Myanmar food.
I didn’t want to be in one place and read and write and philosophize and provide life advice from my room. I had lots of ideas, tips, and lessons to share but I wanted to share them through experience, not just the experience of the past, but through the passing of the present. I can’t survive without color and that is where my need to encompass cultures, food, markets, landscapes, adventures, all of this in my writing comes in.
Also, a lot of people told me, “Don’t just write about travel.” Others said, “Would love to read your individual travel stories.”
Amongst all this, I thought, I would do what I like. Because readers wanted more travel tales, I went all in. As my routine articles and relationship pieces were being applauded, I went all in on them too.
Then while I was still wondering if I could manage these two niches together and whether I should segregate my newsletter into two for different kinds of readers, I got the publisher’s email.
I was in the forest hut then, the one with acres of forests around, where I would often stumble into rabbits on my untimely walks around the day. I was walking to my blue moped to drive to the place where the seafood delivery guy (should be sea animals right?) could reach. Beyond that he wouldn’t be able to find the way, the obscure muddy trail through the forest whose bumps and curves my partner and I knew by heart wasn’t on Google maps. I checked the email, the sun warming me up nicely. And the above email was the email I read.
I would first collect the seafood sea animals feeling like the queen I was feeling, and then go and tell my partner who would be exhilarated for me, for us, and for this fresh possibility. I kicked and kicked and kicked but the moped didn’t start (Sadly, I have no photo of that amazing ocean-blue ride.). So, I walked back to the hut, my feet kicking off the grainy mud, grinning. I directed the delivery guy to our forest enclosure over the phone and showed my partner the email.
He was proud and happy and engulfed me in a big hug as we stood over the sunny ground. He must have been waiting to ask me to do something similar for he wasn’t surprised. “Okay so write that book. We have got the right motivation now.”
Had I not thought of writing a book before?
Of course I had. I didn’t come into the world of writing to not write a book. But frankly, the idea of it seemed too big. Too big a dream? Though I am a bit embarrassed to accept this, yes. Too big a dream. Maybe not meant for a small-city girl like me who just wanted to live on her own terms following a career of passion? My blog would be enough. Like it was for the rest of so many. It won’t be an average blog though. It would be the best. I would work hard, publish a lot, and write deep, researched, and heartfelt stuff. When everyone told me my blog should have more readers “Because. it. is. so. good” I didn’t believe them. I would open my web page, read some posts, and then think sometimes, they’re right. But I’m not marketing enough. Let me focus on writing. I have to market more. I have to write more.
I was never satisfied. I tried social media. Got a hang of it too. Especially of Instagram and Twitter. Very early on I made my newsletter Looking Inwards and started getting subscriptions quickly. Everyone said, “No matter which new platform comes in and which one gets shut, you’ll have your subscribers.” I tried to provide value. To write real stories, share real pictures, and always with every newsletter.
So, as I liked different things I couldn’t always write about one theme. This is a true story that inspired by James Clear I wanted to do chapters on habits. I have a few extensive articles on habits. Those are deep but I didn’t go deeper. I practice habits every day, and they reside in a very personal, valued layer of my being. But I don’t want to write about habits every day. I was inspired by Mark Manson and Brain Pickings (now the Marginalian) but, again, couldn’t stick to one format. When a reader said, “Your articles remind me of the Marginalian but in Indian context” or “That you write straightforward of things about which Mark Manson writes too,” I was proud.
Being happy about being compared to others or aspiring to be like others is not necessarily called dreaming big. I guess in not wanting to overestimate my writing capabilities and stamina, I underestimated them.
I still don’t know so much. I take days to edit one thing. I need hours to conceptualize a newsletter. I can’t do too many things at once.
But the one thing I do, I am so deep into it that you can’t see me from above.
And unlike before when I worried about the rest of the ten things while doing the one, now I focus on what is at hand. That is a big win for me.
So when at the end of our four months in Pondicherry, I got the publication proposal right on the one-year anniversary of our nomadic life, I was jumpy and happy and content.
My dreams were then probably always big. I had told my friends the world is my oyster. I did think so too. With writing, I could leap any length or breadth. I could reach anywhere. But I just couldn’t shape my dreams well before. They had been too fluffy and airy, and unable to catch them, I watched them with my neck craned while they flew above my head. I was perhaps scared to hold such a big dream. Or I didn’t want to sound cliché. I will write a book one day. “Yeah, you will.”
I will be forever grateful to the publisher who inspired me to write the book. That they wanted to look at personal growth through the lens of travel or at travel through the lens of personal growth was already more than enough.
Now I had a specific goal, a direction, and a real dream.
I will publish many more informative posts on the book: the writing and editing process, the challenges and joys of writing a book, how I chose self-publishing even though I had an offer from a publisher, how I found an editor and cover designer, KDP self-publishing, making a paperback available in India, the books I read while writing my own, how I write a book while traveling full-time in a car with my partner and all our stuff, where all I lived to write this book, how I wrote the book in Siliguri, Gangtok, Himachal, Pondicherry, Kolkata, my parents’ home, and Uttarakhand, marketing, making the book trailer, selling the book, and challenges of self-publishing. The list goes on.
Keep an eye out for new posts on On My Canvas if you want to know more about writing books. I would suggest Subscribe to my newsletter Looking Inwards from below, and you’ll stay updated with my new blog posts and the behind the scenes as well.
Meanwhile the good news is that Journeys Beyond and Within... is now out and available on Amazon globally. Those who have already got the book, thank you so much. I hope you are enjoying the stories. For those who want to get the book, can either get a signed copy from me, (please send an email to hello@onmycanvas.com), or order it by searching for the title on your local Amazon. Here it’s on Amazon USA, Amazon India, and Amazon UK. For more links, go here. I’d absolutely love for you to read the book 🙂
Would you like to write your own book one day?
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