Self motivation

On Christmas Day last year 2023, I launched my first book, “ Ordinary is extraordinary “, a self help motivational book cast in a storyline. The book was read and liked by many of my friends and acquaintances as also people not known to me. The high point of the book was readers identifying closely with the main protagonist Sunil, an ordinary man next door, the likes of which we come across in our everyday life. Many readers gave me feedback that they could finish the  book in one reading and wished that it read a tad longer. A few also wished elaboration of the lives of other characters that found mention in the book, but that was just about it. And one general feedback was that my next book was being eagerly awaited! 

Of course, I took the above feedback with a caveat that friends were always generous and supportive and that I must be very careful about the ground reality. The ground reality of today is that people, in general,  are very busy and hard pressed for time to indulge in anything outside their core activity, which is pursuing their profession. Whatever leisure time they have, they are spoilt for choices – Internet, social media, OTT, sporting events, movies et al. Besides, everyone has a wish list of the movies they want to see, the authors they want to read and places they want to visit! I for one read the biography and filmography of Satyajit Ray and then watched all his movies one by one on YouTube and other channels! I did a similar exercise of reading James Bond’s books following them by watching the concerned movies based there on. Currently, I have got interested in Salman Rushdie’s work and hope to read some of his books. 

Under the circumstances, the only factor that comes to my rescue is my self motivation. My blogging journey of the past several years has been sustained due to my self motivation. Most of my blogs are hardly read by at best 4 to 5 readers and enjoy no commercial support in spite of I having created a significant body of work. And my next book, a romantic interlude with country’s partition as a backdrop, is a work of pure fiction that’s high on emotions but bereft of any preaching! This is not a curtain raiser for my new book, which will be launched properly when it’s ready, which is still some distance away, but this post is primarily aimed at all the existing and budding writers- bloggers, authors, social media users etc- exhorting them to persist with their passion by remaining self motivated, irrespective of number of likes or quality and quantity of feedback on their work! Our writing, if it touches even one heart, can be deemed to have achieved the purpose that’s primarily satisfying our own creativity. It was this self motivation only that kept me going for years in my professional life despite normal ups and downs.