Skip to main content

Luck -- How Important is it for your Writing Career?

Welcome to Week L of Authors' Tips: A to Z of Writing.
If this is the first time you are visiting this series, here's a quick recap.

Authors share their tips on writing fiction - and each week we talk about various aspects of writing. This week I talk about getting Lucky and whether that is a factor or not in your writing career. 


This post was originally written for the Pink Heart Society and you can read it here...


Luck is the “force that causes things, especially good things, to happen to you by chance and not as a result of your own efforts or abilities”. That’s the definition of luck in the Cambridge dictionary. 

We all do get it that talent without hard work will lead us down the path to failure and eternal damnation. Yet, whenever there is news of ‘something good’ coming our way, we inadvertently hope for a bit of good luck. I wonder what it would be like to have our well-wishers bless us with plenty of ‘good efforts’ or ‘good abilities’. Perhaps someone might just say something like, ‘wishing you tons of good hard work’? 

Oprah Winfrey has famously said – or perhaps she was simply paraphrasing Roman philosopher Seneca? – luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. No truer words have been said. 

It reminds me of the time when I came across one such opportunity and grabbed it with both hands: Harlequin had just launched its Aspiring Authors contest in India and I turned my short story idea into a contest entry. In hindsight, the opportunity itself was something that emerged totally out of the blue—a lucky break. After all, if I hadn’t been in the right place at the right time, the opportunity would have simply sailed past me. I ended up winning the contest and thus began my journey as a romance author. There was another such happy situation of preparation meeting opportunity when I wrote a screenplay for a filmmaker which went on to become a produced short film. 

For me, preparation is all about working on my craft while having an ear to the ground for possible opportunity. But I have learned that in life, there is always a ‘force’ at work. You may choose to call it a combination of enabling elements. Or you may call it luck. Without that special ‘force’ / enabling elements, your best made plans can come to nought. Haven’t we all experienced it at some point in our lives? Just when everything is going swimmingly well, and we’re that close to achieving a goal, one small factor can jeopardise it all. Sometimes you don’t have a clue as to what the ‘wrench’ in the works was! The high moment dissipates as if it never was, as if it was simply a figment of your imagination. Poof! 

Having experienced it multiple times, I have come to believe that there is one more factor at play in all this. Resilience. The ability to bounce back from challenges and setbacks while keeping a positive frame of mind is perhaps just as important as talent and hard work, opportunity and luck.
If it weren’t for that crucial trait, we would never have had the pleasure to read the works of JK Rowling, Stephen King, Margaret Mitchell, Agatha Christie and many others who were rejected multiple times. Resilience is perhaps the ultimate force that can see us through our writing journey. May the Force be with all of us! 

Don't forget to check out these K &  L posts from my author friends: 

Kindle Publishing by Sudesna Ghosh

Kill your Darlings! by Preethi Venugopala

Kill your Readers or Better Not... by Reet Singh


Length - Does it Matter in Writing by Devika Fernando

Writing Love Scenes by Reet Singh 

Creative Writing: A Leap of Faith by Preethi Venugopala
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree - Review of the International Booker Prize Winner

Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree My rating: 5 of 5 stars Geetanjali Shree's original book in Hindi is called Ret Samadhi and the translated version by Daisy Rockwell is Tomb of Sand. The writer's style is lyrical and captures the essence of an Indian family completely and evocatively. In fact the amazing thing about the author's style is that it goes above and beyond the cast of characters, roping in inanimate objects (like the door, for instance), the natural elements, crows and invisible things like borders. The story lies not so much in the plotline of an old woman and her journey to find the house and man she has left behind as in highlighting the nuances of families, countries, borders, neighbourhoods, galis and mohallas , the environment, the smells, sounds and landscape, the past and present and everything in between (including a delightful treatise on the silk sari as narrated from the point of view of a crow!) that makes up the heart and soul of India. The writi

Bombay Heights: The perfect Diwali read is now available in paperback

Reading romance during the festive season adds to the fun and sparkle, doesn't it? So, for Diwali 2021, I decided to bring out a Paperback edition of my rom-com Bombay Heights: Sleepless in the City of Dreams .  The best part is that the story takes place during the festive season. What's not to love! So, get ready to be immersed in the spirit of the festival of lights!  Blurb: Small town girl Sanjana Kale wants a fresh start in Mumbai. A challenging job and some much needed distance from her ludicrously over-protective family could get her life under control. Forced to team up with video game designer Ashwin Deo, who is too attractive for his own good, she finds life becoming a whole lot more complicated when he turns out to be her new neighbour. How can she maintain a professional distance with this charming troublemaker who believes in getting up close and personal? To make matters worse, her ex tries to manipulate her loved ones to work his way back into her life

Book Review of Where Did You Go? by P.L. Jonas

  The popularity of novels like Gone Girl and T he Girl on the Train with an intriguing premise, unreliable narrators and plot twists, has put the spotlight on psychological suspense stories. Such stories have a thriller like urgency about them and yet are rooted in familiar, real life situations. A well crafted, edgy psychological suspense can keep the reader hooked till the very last page.  The novella Where Did You Go ? by debut author P.L. Jonas begins with an intriguing set up. Sammy, a successful but reclusive ghostwriter, is offered a chance of a life time. The project involves completing a half-finished manuscript by her favourite writer, Margaret Mitchell, the celebrated author of  the all-time classic Gone with the Wind . Her brief is simple: she needs to follow the outline that the author has left behind and submit a draft within a tight deadline.  Her publisher, James, is confident that Sammy has what it takes to finish the novel. The chance of having her name on the book