Twenty three-year-old author, entrepreneur and motivational speaker Sanil Sachar started writing during his stay in England, where he completed his high school and graduation.
After working in the corporate sector, he finally decided to take up writing full time. His recently released second book The Dark Side of Light reflects life’s complexities by stitching together vignettes of romance, comedy, murder and mystery.
“I love realism to begin with. That leads to fantasies turning into realistic stories. When I’m on the other side of the page, I prefer my genres to be a buffet because every emotion compliments the other,” he says, talking about the genre that draws him the most as a reader and a writer.
“Although, we are first exposed to love, each emotion is a ripple effect leading to continuity and thus I choose to find comfort and serenity in the chaotic multi genre approach.”
One encounter that he truly cherishes, and feels inspired by is meeting and speaking with Stephen Fry during the Jaipur Literature Festival. “His experiences and eloquent persona were a sheer inspiration. I’d love to meet and converse with him sometime in the near future,” he says.
He may be just two books old, but he has a mature and seasoned approach to what each author hates stumbling across — writer’s block. “If writing is a marathon then a writer’s block is stopping to catch your breath,” he says, adding, “A writer’s block isn’t a phenomenon when you don’t know what to write, instead when you don’t know what all to write! Taking a piece of paper and writing all the words, thoughts that clutter your mind and then stemming ideas from those that seem relevant.
Like all new authors he too has faced his share of rejections. And his advice for budding writers for preventing rejection from turning into dejection: “The moment you realise almost all lasting inventions come post-multiple road blocks, you’ll treat every setback as a propeller. We elevate higher each time we sink lower into a trampoline, so treat every rejection like a successful rejection.”
And his one tip for aspiring writers is — “A runner tires down towards the end of a race only because he did most of the hard work prior to the last stretch. Similarly, the hard bit isn’t getting published, it’s the writing. Stick to your individuality, it’s the one tool nobody else will have and keep going forward, one word at a time.
