Today I have a guest post from author Saurav Dutt.
The Winter Song
Saurav Dutt
From the acclaimed Author of ‘The Butterfly Room’ comes a powerful afterlife drama conveying how great gifts can be hidden in death and how they can bear fruit in our lives if we have the faith to let them unfold.
Somewhere between the mountains and the mist in Simla, India a widower must reconcile himself to the loss and grief that haunts him after the recent death of his wife.
Unhinged by grief, anger, and guilt, John Perera has set off on a journey, a journey to honour the love of his life and to fulfil the promise he made to her to uncover the truth behind the mysterious death of their son. It is a journey of extraordinary self-discovery that will take him to the extremities of his soul and question all he believes about life, death, and faith.
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Choosing to become a writer takes a great deal of sacrifice, physical in putting in the hours to write, edit, formulate marketing ideas, and of course a great deal of mental struggle. Perhaps it’s the mental part that is the trickiest to surmount, and it puts off a lot of budding writers from putting their creation out into the world.
Mental wellness can often be compromised because after the excitement of starting the journey and having the audacity to put yourself out into the public comes a moment of incredible doubt. It’s a voice that tells you nobody cares about your work, that nobody is interested enough in it to buy it, worse of all that they’ll hate it, that they’ll ignore it.
Then there’s the voice that wants you to quit half way through, that says the characters are awful, the dialogue is obvious and trite, that the story unravels and is unrealistic.
And if you take all these voices to heart soon you find you forsake your passion and you go back to life, knowing deep in your heart that you failed.
If that sounds like you then take a moment to breathe and be selfish for a moment. This is your journey, it’s your story, your gift to yourself, and the sense of accomplishment that comes at the end of it is worth the ride. And look, it makes life exciting, to create something from nothing, to impart your wisdom and skill to the world, and to convince perfect strangers to part with their cash to take the ride with you-that’s an incredible accomplishment; and much like anything else in life, no risk, no reward.
Do you want to be that person in their rocking chair wondering whether you should have taken that leap into the unknown, to dare to try? Sure it’s never to late to become a writer, but what about making a career of it? A healthy side hustle? To get all those voices out of your head and to create something wonderful, that says something?
I think that journey is worth it, and that’s why after many years of doubting myself and hating myself for not daring to try, I finally did it and I told doubt and fear that they were no longer welcome in my life. Success comes but it’s also an ongoing battle with our own mental wellness because it never truly leaves.
If you’re reading this and there’s even the remotest sense of a writer within you, then I say dare to dream and dare to be bold. Because if you are even remotely creative you’ll know that forsaking your art is far more painful than having tried and failed. And you never really fail at becoming a writer, you just find a different-and better-way to do it.
Saurav Dutt is an Author, Political Columnist and Human Rights Campaigner. A journalist in three continents, his acclaimed debut novel ‘The Butterfly Room’ explored issues of domestic violence and homophobia within South Asian communities and has been showcased alongside leading political figures and human rights campaigners. His work for human rights and charity campaign work has taken Dutt to speaking engagements at the WEF, IKWRO, IWN, Houses of Parliament and TEDx.
After exploring the issue of psychological abuse and domestic violence in ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ Dutt was commissioned by a major Hollywood production house to pen the official novelization of the major motion picture ‘Tiger’ (starring Golden Globe winning and Academy Award nominated actor Mickey Rourke) and he commemorated the centenary of the infamous Amritsar Massacre in India with ‘Garden of Bullets: Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh’ which was featured in TIME magazine. TIGER is the biographical account of Parminder Singh Nagra, a trailblazing Sikh boxer who fought successfully for the right to compete in the ring with his beard, an essential part of his faith.
A syndicated political columnist, Dutt writes for the International Business Times, The Times of Israel, Human Events, and American Herald Tribune. He has featured on CNN, GQ, Huffington Post, Business Insider, BBC television and radio, RT (Russia Today), Press TV, Sky News, and more. He has been shortlisted several times for the Asian Achievers Awards and Asian Media Awards. He resides in the United Kingdom, Los Angeles, and India.
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