Stop aspiring, start writing: Roji Abraham

Roji Abraham has good humour. Asked about his inspiration to write a book, the author of Kaleidoscopic Lives — Ensemble Narratives of the Common Man, jokes about a vision of a book forming between the rings of smoke! For more than 10 years, Roji has been blogging and writing articles, with an impressive number of followers. Starting out as a ghost writer, the author is currently balancing his life as a project manager in a Bengaluru IT firm with penning his new book Quit Bossing, Start Leading.

 

Asked about his inspiration to write a book, the author of Kaleidoscopic Lives — Ensemble Narratives of the Common Man, jokes about a vision of a book forming between the rings of smoke!

Which is the best opening line in a book that you have ever read?
“She stopped screaming when she died. It was then that he started to scream.” — Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer.

Which book do you keep revisiting time and again?
I seldom read a book more than once. But there sections from Khaled Hosseini’s Kite Runner, Ayn Rand’s books (Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged), Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People that I keep revisiting.

How can new/budding writers prevent rejection from turning into dejection?
I believe the publishing industry itself is going through a paradigm shift and therefore the days of rejection and subsequent dejection are long past. If a writer believes in the power of his/her writing and has at least a small dedicated audience, he/she can choose to get published through self-publishing firms or through Kindle Direct Publishing as an alternative to traditional publishing.

One tip for aspiring writers?
Stop aspiring, start writing! If you want to become a writer but never wrote anything yet, you should at least start off with a small blog and fine-tune your writing over time. There are a million things you could write about, but the trick is to just cultivate a writing habit and before long, words will come as naturally to you as speaking does.