When I was young, my father forbade my mother from teaching me cooking.

He didn’t want me to get sucked into housework and become what every girl in my time was expected to become— a housewife.

My mother respected his wishes and toiled alone in the kitchen while I concentrated on my studies. I was a bright student. I went through my teen years and early twenties without knowing how to cook.

When I finished my master’s degree and had a few free months before starting my Ph.D. degree, my mother, in her infinite wisdom, decided that I should join a cooking course. It was every mother’s duty to prepare her daughter for married life.

Word was sent around to my mother’s school (she was a teacher) and one of her colleagues suggested Mrs. Singh, who ran cooking classes from her home. So I was enrolled in the course without my knowledge.

Mrs. Singh was a celebrity chef in my town. An elegant woman, living in a modish home, in a posh colony. When I was dropped on her doorstep, I was shaking in my boots. Distressed because I didn’t know anything about cooking, and worried about the possibility of being thrown in with experienced ladies who have been cooking for years.

I was right. Most of the other participants were experienced cooks and high-class ladies who threw dinner parties and wanted to learn new recipes to impress their guests. I tried to hide behind books, spending most of my time copying recipes while they chatted, exchanged tips, and did the actual cooking.

At the end of the course, they enhanced their skills while I filled in an old notebook with recipes that I was never going to try.

Eight months later, I got married (of course arranged marriage). My husband lived in Australia and came on a four-week vacation to get married. His parents had done the homework for him and shortlisted three potential brides. He didn’t get the chance to meet the other two because my father decided to arrive first so that if in case the boy and the girl agree, there is at least some time to do the wedding preparation.

The boy and the girl did agree. A marriage was set in two weeks’ time, and a week after, my husband flew back to Australia, leaving me with his parents while waiting for the visa.

Lo-and-behold! My mother-in-law fell sick on the way back from the airport (5 hours’ journey). On my first day in my in-law’s home and it was assumed that I would cook lunch for the family. We were five in the household: my mother-in-law, father-in-law, my husband’s younger brother, and his youngest sister. The brother went to his work, the sister to the university, and I towards the kitchen.

I did the dishes and checked the fridge. All I could find were two eggplants. My luck! Eggplants are the hardest to cook. According to Indian cuisine, there is only one way to cook them, which is to make Bhurtha.

I didn’t know how to cook eggplants. Checking the notebook where I had copied Mrs. Singh’s recipes was futile because I knew it didn’t have the recipe. I was in tears. I sat down and wrote a letter to my mother, telling her about my predicament and blaming her for not teaching me how to cook basic dishes.

After venting out, I calmed down and got on with the job. Turning the gas stove on, I roasted them till the skin was thoroughly charred. I then started peeling the skin. Eggplants were too hot. I remembered my mother doing it under running water. So I did the same. Images of my mother cooking the dish over the years started coming to me. One by one, the next step became apparent.

I remembered her saying you need lots of onions and tomatoes to cook eggplant because after roasting eggplant dries down and reduces in size. Besides, onions and tomatoes give the dish its taste. So I chopped the onions and fried them till they turned brown and then added the meshed eggplants and spices and fried them together. The last step was to add chopped tomatoes, cover them with a lid, and steam cook them.

My father-in-law loved it. To date, I am not sure whether he really liked it or just said it to make me feel good.

Five months later, when I joined my husband in Australia. I was no better than before. My husband was a better cook than me because he lived by himself and I had no choice but to learn to cook.

So cooking became my challenge. I borrowed as many cookbooks on Indian cooking as I could find in the local library and started trying them. I learned to make veggie curries, meat curries, kababs, and even Indian sweets.

Each time I perfected one, my husband threw another challenge my way. I learned to make Gulab Jamun and did a decent job with them and my husband said I bet you can’t make Jalebi. So off I went to learn to make jalebis. After multiple failed attempts, I perfected the recipe, and my husband said I bet you can’t make Rasmalai. So off I went, trying making Rasmalai.

You get the picture.

But cooking is not my forte. Cooking was a challenge for me, something to excel at but not a passion.

Then why the hell do I want to write a cookbook?
Because my daughters want me to.

Like me, they were never into cooking. But now that they are both married and running their household, suddenly they want to inherit my knowledge. And I don’t want to repeat my mother’s mistake.

They want me to write down their favorite recipes in book form. And I want to embellish that book with stories associated with them and my own childhood memories.

So this book is virsa (inheritance) from a mother to her daughters. For a moment, I thought I might take this project into a bigger sense and write a book for all Punjabi daughters. But then I chicken out. I am keeping the project small at this stage. I have no experience in writing cookbooks, and hell, I am not even a passionate cook. But I love to write. And I love to tell stories.

More than the recipes I want to pass down stories to my daughters. They can get recipes from the internet. And they will make their own recipes, I am sure, just like I did. But only I can tell them the stories associated with the food they ate while growing up.

So here I am, starting another book, but this time for a specific audience.

Subscribe to my newsletter at A Whimsical Writer for more tips and motivation.

Photo by Yubraj Timsina on Unsplash

“I have no time to write a book.”

“Writing a book takes years.”

“I can’t write a book. I am just a blogger.”

I hear this all the time.

For a long time, I also believed in the same. The only trouble was I desperately wanted to write a book.

I had written hundreds of articles, but they meant nothing.

Then one day, I heard a tiny voice in the wee hours of the morning. It said, “Write the damn book. Start today, and do it fast.”

If there is one thing that I have learned in my creative life, it is to act on the tiny voice when you hear it. I opened my laptop and got to work. I was going to write a book, and I was going to start the same day.

I needed an idea.

Something I was good at so that I could write it fast.

Something that people would want to read.
Something that solved a problem.
Something people were willing to pay for?

I couldn’t think of anything, so I turned those questions to myself.

What would I want to read?
What problem of mine would I like to solve?
What am I willing to pay money for?

The problem I wanted to solve at that moment was — how to write a book and that too fast. Suppose there was a book which told me that I would have paid money for it.

I was sure there were many books available on the topic. Perhaps the information existed on the internet as well. But I thought, “If I could give it a bit of a twist, perhaps I could write a useful book and learn a lot in the process.”

So I told myself, what if I write and publish the book in a week document the process, thereby proving that it can be done?

That was it. I had my topic and a unique angle.

My next question was. Who was the book for? Who was the niche audience I was serving?

The answer — writers like me.

Writers who want to write a book but were intimidated by the process.
Writers whose inner critics stopped them each time they tried.
Writers who wanted to write books quickly.

If I could explain the process and prove that it is repeatable, there might be a market for the book.

I got to work. By the end of the week, I published the book.

Within a week transitioned from a wannabe author to a published author.

Do you want to write a book too but to intimidated by the process?

Chances are you might already have written a book.

If you have been writing articles on Medium, your blog, or any other platform, you might have enough material for a book.

Your book is already in those articles, and all you need to do is to curate them in the form of a book.

My next book is on productivity. While writing it, I found I have already written more than twenty articles on productivity. I already have plenty of material for the book in those articles.

All I need to do is curate it and turn it into a book.

J.R. Heimbigner, another Medium writer, wrote his first book as medium articles. He started as a listicle of 21 productivity tips. He then broke down each tip into a post. 21 Medium stories later, he had enough content for a book, which he self-published in 2019.

You will be surprised to know how many writers write their books this way. They write a sequence of articles on a topic to tease out their ideas. When they have enough material, they write a book from it.

You can write fiction using this strategy.

Fredrik Backman wrote A Man Called Ove in the form of blog posts under the heading, “I am a Man Called Ove,” where he wrote about his pet peeves and annoyances.

Soon he realized that his writing had the potential for the creation of an interesting fictional character. So he turned it into a novel. His novel has more than two million copies sold and adapted into a film of the same name.

Your book doesn’t have to be 50,000 words long.

If you have written 5,000 words or more on a single topic, you have enough content for a short read.

Because books don’t have to be 50,000 words anymore. Most of the non-fiction books had one or two ideas that are explained in the first two chapters. The rest of the book is usually padding around those ideas in the form of examples and let’s say fluff.

People don’t have time for the fluff. Instead, they want useful information given to them in a straight manner.

Several bestselling books are less than 100 pages these days. Here are some examples:

Living off the Grid with Organic Gardening by Anik Biswas (20 pages)

The Canning and Preserving by Maritza Parker (23 pages)

7 Steps to Flawless Communication by Thomas Kass (90 pages)

The Art of War by Tzu Sun (26 pages)

Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It by Kamal Ravikant(56 pages)

As long as you have a solution to a problem or an interesting story to tell, you can turn it into a short read.

Kamal Ravikant turned his self-healing story into a book and sold millions of copies.

In his book, Choose Yourself, James Altucher tells the story of Kamal Ravikant, who was one of his followers. They would correspond regularly until one day, Kamal Ravikant went missing.

James found out that Kamal was very sick and getting worse. He had been ill for months. Some days he couldn’t move or wake up. Other days he had enough energy to go outside but only for a few minutes, and then he had to go back inside. Kamal’s sickness was a mystery. The doctors couldn’t help him; he was infinitely tired, feverish, in pain, and it was getting worse.

Months went by without any word from Kamal, and James started fearing the worst.

Then one day, Kamal commented on the James blog again. He started interacting with the community. James was delighted to know that he was alive. He asked Kamal, “What happened?” “How’d you get better?”

Kamal’s response was the incredible:

“I’ll tell you the secret,” he said, “I thought I was going to die. I was just lying in bed and couldn’t move, I had a high fever, and was in too much pain. I really thought I was going to die. Finally, I just started saying over and over again, ‘I love myself.’”

Kamal then wrote about his experience in Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It.

And I got better. My body started healing faster. My state of mind grew lighter. But the thing I never expected or imagined, life got better. But not just better, things happened that were fantastically out of my reach. This I couldn’t have dreamed of […] I found myself using the word ‘magic’ to describe what was happening. And through it all I kept repeating to myself, ‘I love myself. I love myself. I love myself.’

But his book was just 40 pages long. No publisher was ready to publish it. So he self-published it. The book became a phenomenon. It went on the bestseller list on Amazon and stayed there for months.

Here is the book summary by none other than James Clear on his website.

Don’t think you have to write a 200-page book.

Don’t think that you need a year to write a book.

Don’t think you are just a blogger and can’t write a book yet.

Just go through what you have already written and see if there is something you can turn into a book.

Leave me a comment if you need any help to proceed.

Subscribe to my newsletter at A Whimsical Writer for more tips and motivation.

There are some affiliate links in this article.

1) You can’t write a book without a deadline.

This is primarily true with all projects, but with books, it is gospel. A book tends to get out of your hands and become a monster. Expect your brain to rebel too. It would want to do everything else but work on the book. The only way to finish a book is to hire an editor who has pre-charged you for editing and has blocked his time. The late you get with delivering your book, the less time he has to edit it, which means poor quality editing. And in case you don’t finish in time, you lose your money and your editor too. Most professional editors want to work with professional authors. So if you expect professionalism from them, you got to be professional too.

2) You are bound to struggle with your first few books.

I wrote my first book like I had my first baby. I didn’t know what to expect and just went with the flow. I made several mistakes, but it didn’t matter. But with the second one, I learned many pitfalls and still fell into them. Despite making several lists, I still wasted time and effort. Now, taking a step back, I am more accepting that I will struggle with my first few books, which is fine. Just two years ago, I struggled with writing a 1000 word article. Today I am writing a 20,000-word book a month. If I can come that far in two years, I will get better in the next two.

3) Building a backlist is of utmost importance.

Nothing sells your book like your next book. So, early in your career, you will be spending time building a backlist and learning the ins and outs of the industry. Even if nobody buys your earlier books, having a backlist establishes you as an author in the industry and prepares the ground for the sale of your future work.

4) Amazon Ads could be your friend.

When you are relatively new in the industry and don’t have a mailing list, Amazon advertisements could bring much-needed visibility to your books. Without the promotions, no one knows about your book.

You don’t have to abandon your earlier books after putting all the work into writing, editing, formatting, publishing, and launching them. Set up Amazon ads and get the visibility your book deserves. Although Amazon ads don’t chew up your advertising dollars as Facebook or Google does, they do chew up your time. There is a lot to learn in this area.

5) Book-A-Month could be a real strategy.

What writing an ‘article-a-day’ is for Medium writers; writing a ‘book-a-month’ is for Amazon writers. The rapid-releases strategy not only gives momentum to your writing practice but to the marketing of your book as well. ‘Nothing sells a book better than the next book’ is the industry cliché.

It might come as a surprise to some but it is easier to write an article a day than it is to write an article once a week. The same is true for writing books. Speed brings focus and fluency.

6) Block out a week a month to write the book.

There are only four weeks in a month. So if you want to write a book in a month, you need to block out at least a week. You need to write 3000 words a day for a 21,000 words book. You will then need another week to edit it.

I wrote my first book in one week. I decided to take the weekend off with the second one and wrote it in 10 days instead. It turned out to be a better strategy as I didn’t have to postpone any weekend plans. I wrote 2000 words a day (a more manageable target) and edited the previous day’s work as I went.

7) You got to love the process.

A career as an author is not for those who want to succeed quickly. Even with rapid releases and advertising, building a backlist and readership takes a long time. You got to love the process (and writing) enough to be able to sustain for that long. Most authors who are doing well today have been writing for decades. They can do that because they love writing and the process of generating books.

8) Initially, you might have to concentrate all your energy on the task at hand.

When I got serious about writing on Medium, I stopped everything else and wrote 100 articles in 100 days to get into the rhythm of writing for the platform. I did the same for writing books. For two months, I entirely concentrated on books. I didn’t check social media, and I didn’t write on Medium. Once I established the system, and I began to get a bit more time, I started going back to the platforms I used to be active before.

9) Treat everything as an experiment.

Writing 100 articles in 100 days was an experiment. So was publishing something on three social media platforms for 100 consecutive days was an experiment. My first book was an experiment too. An experiment to see if I could write a book in a week. Writing a book a month is an experiment too, if I succeed, well and good. If I fail, no big deal. I will learn a lot during the process.

Speaking of failure, I could pull through 90 Days of Focus on Fiction back in August, neither could I keep the promise I made last week to write an article a day for December. They were just experiments. Some I was able to pull through, others I couldn’t.

Both these goals have gone to my future To-Do lists, and hopefully, I will do justice to them one day.

10) Writing a book is just one-third of the battle.

Two-third is marketing. According to The State of Indie Authorship in 2021, 79% of independent authors list marketing as the most challenging part of the publishing process. Writing the book came in second at 14%. I am finding the same. It could be that marketing is taking me away from my passion, i.e. writing, or that my marketing channels are not set as my writing process has. I will be spending more time on it in the next year.

If you like my work, you can subscribe to my newsletter at A Whimsical Writer.