Confessions of a Chick Lit Writer

"I would never write stories that can be adapted to Bollywood flicks. Over my dead body"

Indian readers are not adventurous, and are looking for more of the dumbed down chick lit they have got used to. A vast, almost-literate reading population has been thrown up in the glorious post-Chetan Bhagat era and publishers are determined to cash in on these readers because they turn books into bestsellers.

I was asked by one publisher to dumb down my book, but I refused very politely. I even smiled sweetly. I would also never write stories that can be adapted to Bollywood flicks. Over my dead body!

Publishers are encouraging all kinds of writers, and there are so many of them now that nobody will ever remember their names. But everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame—why grudge them that? What if the rest of the world forgets them, their mummies and daddies won't!

What makes me weep, though, are writers who hire PR agents, or frequently put links of reviews/interviews on FB and Twitter, as well as links to relatively obscure websites where their books are on a top 10 list. Why? Why? Why? It's only a bloody book!

There is another thing that really gets my goat. In the good old days, you had to write fairly well (even if your story was lousy) to get published. Grammar was a hygiene factor. That's not the case anymore. Try this: put ten 'bestselling' Indian authors in a room and ask them to write a paragraph on anything without an editor present to fix their grammar. You may faint when you read the results, so please don't try this on an empty stomach. They really need help with that. Or else, ask them to write in a language they're comfortable in and get a great English translator (who gets credit on the book cover), instead of a frustrated copy editor who is driven to alcoholism by stunning examples of lousy English and is rarely acknowledged. 

(This author has been writing chick lit since 2005)

As told to Aastha Atray Banan