Runner Up: Sangeetha Narayan
Sugar Land, Texas
Congratulations, Sangeetha!
Sangeetha’s Bio:
Sangeetha Narayan did her master’s in the commerce background. Then she moved on to complete a children's literature course from the Institute of Children's Literature, based in Connecticut.
A couple of her short stories have been published in children's magazines based in India. Currently, she's working on a multicultural young adult novel and is an active blogger in an Indian website, www.sulekha.com.
How I Became a Published Writer
By Sangeetha Narayan
They say that when you really want something with all of your heart, the entire forces of nature conspire to fulfill your wishes. Long time back, in a cyber-world, I’d come across this website called Sulekha. Sulekha is an Indian website which is also every blogger’s dream come true. A friend of mine was an active participant and I casually entered her world, just to check out some of her poems.
As I slowly started surfing the website, I realized that there was a whole new world out there, just waiting for me. There were writers from various backgrounds, and various genres, just waiting to be recognized and maybe even published some day. The first day I entered, I was hooked. My heart melted at some of the fictional stories that I read, and I decided that this was going to be my platform where I would showcase my written work.
It didn’t take me long to come up with stories and articles, supported by my ever-active muse. I was in the seventh heaven, when I started getting responses from so many strangers, whom I’d never seen in my life before. There’s nothing like the instant gratification that a writer gets for his/her written work. The comments kept coming from all over the place and encouraged by them, I kept on producing the best of my stories. I’d already started dreaming about how some publisher would go through my posts and soon offers would start pouring from all over the world.
Lost in the world of my fictional stories, and my own personal dreams, I saw days turning into weeks and then into months. I still kept writing and blogging, and continued to receive lots of positive feedback. Soon, Sulekha started a blog print contest. According to this contest, Penguin books and Sulekha was to launch a blog print initiative, where 52 of the best blogs will be selected and judged for the publication of 25 best entries in a book. It was almost as if God was in a mood for answering my prayers. The selection was to be done over a period of six months, and that gave me sufficient time to prepare.
So, I started preparing my entries for the contest. I’d simply assumed that I would be selected in the first month, after- all I was really good, wasn’t I? But, the first month went by and I wasn’t selected. Then the second month and then the third month, but I still couldn’t get through. By this time I was desperate and frustrated. After a great deal of huffing and puffing, I decided that Sulekha wasn’t the right platform for me. I had spent almost eight to nine months of my life, giving them some of my best work, and what had they given me in return --- Zilch!
They had received so much of page views through me and all I had received in return was some worthless comments. I kept pacing from one end of the room to another, getting angrier and angrier. Finally, I decided that I would send them a mail informing them of my decision to quit!
So, I sat down and typed a long mail, expressing my anger and disappointment at being treated this way and ended the mail with a dramatic statement, “I quit!” Then, before I could change my mind, I clicked on send, a part of me relieved and the other part cursing myself for my stupidity. To my horror, I got an error, “Mailer demon error!”
“That’s just not possible!” I exclaimed. I’d sent lots of mail to this address before and never had any problems. So, I just re-sent it once more. Again, I received the same error mail, “Mailer Demon error!”
So, I told myself, “Third time is the charm,” and re-sent the whole thing for the third time. Well, you guessed it; I got the same error message again. By this time, I was frustrated by my luck. Not only had I been rejected thrice for blog print, even my email had been rejected thrice! Life couldn’t possibly get more unfair than this. I couldn’t even quit in peace!
So, I stayed away from my computer for the next couple of days. However, on the third day, I simply couldn’t resist my curiosity. I had to find out if my mail had made it to Sulekha somehow, and if my account had been deleted yet. To my surprise, my account was still intact, and I had received some more complimentary comments to some of my stories. Also, I’d received a note from a Sulekha member, who informed me that she liked the way I wrote and would be interested in publishing one of my stories in her magazine! I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry that day. I had almost deleted my account a couple of days back. If I’d succeeded in that, I would never have seen this amazing day.
Today, I’m a published writer and I can’t help but wonder why my mail refused to reach its destination. The whole incident just makes me believe in destiny or fate. Everything happens at its own time and pace and when something is meant to happen, nothing can stop it! You can call it serendipity, fate or destiny; whatever it was worked for me big time and made my fondest dream come true!
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