Interview..

It has always been a dream to read my interview in one of the newspapers someday. But, with blogging, I don’t really need to wait for some journalist to come to me. I have framed certain questions and answered them. I will call this as a mock-interview.

Q1) What made you start a blog first ?
A) To be frank, I started the blog since I had so much time to kill and had no work to do when I was in college. Also, it was the stories of how people earned money out of it that made me to create a blog. Now, blogging is just a hobby and I make no money out of it.

Q2) Why blogging?
A) Mostly, I blog because I want to be heard. (or read) There are many things that I want to tell to the world, but I cannot tell otherwise and this is the best medium that helps me put my thoughts across.
Every post of mine has a hidden message and one needs to read-between-the-lines to find it.

Q3) Who are your target readers?
A) There’s no particular target audience but, yeah, most of my articles are based on 3 categories – relationships, reviews and grandma tales.
relationships are for youth and young adults.
reviews are for all movies/novels lovers.
grandma tales are for children and adults alike.
So, in a way, I can say that I’ve some or the other thing for every age-group.

Q4) Most of your posts are related to relationships. Are your posts auto-biographical? Or are they inspired from real-life incidents?
A) No. Except the posts categorised as personal, none of my posts are auto-biographical and they aren’t inspired from any real-life incidents either.
Most of my inspiration is from movies and novels that I have grown up watching and reading respectively. Also,  the various stories that I’ve heard from my romance-addict friends have helped me write my posts.

Q5) Ever thought of publishing a novel?
A) Yes. That has been in my mind for a long time now. Am just waiting for the right kind of story to hit me that can not only be written, but also published and marketed.

Q6) What has changed in/around you since you started blogging?
A) The noticeable change in me is that my thoughts have become more coherent and clearer. And the noticeable change around me is that people look upon me with respect (and some with contempt) after reading my articles.

Q7) The best thing about blogging?
A) I read somewhere, “An artiste never lusts after money but lusts only for appreciation and recognition.” That’s so true. (not that I’m calling myself an artist, am just an amateur.)
Lots of people tweet/message/email me telling that my posts are good to read and that not only encourages me to write better but also makes me elated and satisfies the amateur writer in me. 

Q8) What do you think helps you most to write?
A) I have been reading a daily newspaper since I was 12. I started reading novels when I was 14 and have read about 150+ novels so far. Still, there are so many authors/books/magazines/blogs to read and have so little time.
Anyway, so mostly I credit my (in)extensive reading for my writing.

Q9) Procedure from an idea to a published post.
A) First, as and when the thought strikes me, I write it down in cell-phone/paper in short-hand, lest I forget it. Then as and when I get time and an inclination to write, I go back to that draft and build the post upon it. Once am done developing the whole post, I read it once and edit wherever I find editing necessary. Then I preview the post and read it once again because most of my errors are discovered in reading the post in the preview mode than in the writing mode. Then, I publish it and read it once again. Sometimes, I do discover an error or a two after publishing the post. Tedious, I know, but very necessary.

Q10) Any advises to newbies?
A) Some..

• Read. As much as you can. One can never read enough. At-least half an hour daily, if not more.


• Every single human thinks, but not all can write because their thoughts wander here and there without any connection. They ponder over a situation/thought/feeling for hours and then simply forget it. Wasting so much of their time and energy over nothing. So, make your thoughts clearer. Let there be some kind of connection between each thought and let there be a proper chain of thoughts.


• There are millions of awesome blogs with posts on ‘how to’ out there. From creating a blog to publishing a post to publicising to bringing traffic to your blog, everything is clearly explained. Read them. They will give you ideas and much-needed tips too.


• When I first started a blog, I read many articles on various web-sites about how to do it the right way. All the articles more or less said the same thing.
  1) Select a niche that you want to write on.
  2) Write regularly and stick to the niche.
  The logic behind this is that by selecting and sticking to a niche, a reader will know what your blog contains (and will contain in future) once he has visited your blog. And a reader is not confused as to what to expect from your blog.
  I, personally, haven’t been able to select a niche as I can never confine myself to a single category. That’s why I dabble into various things and I haven’t selected any category as my prerogative.

P.S: If you have any questions that you want to ask me regarding blogging or regarding my blog, you can mail them to me and I will include them in my next post(s).

 

source jigar-doshi