Writing my First Book

• November 10, 2022
• ramgi@user
• no comments

In 2011, I came back from Chicago, after undergoing a clinical trial. My body was rebooted in the experimental treatment. But I also wanted to reboot my life. And the way I did it was hilarious…

I had always wanted to write. I started with short stories about dogs dying horrible deaths when I was 5. You see, I had just been bitten by a dog and I hated them (Today I love dogs, of course. They are awesome). Soon I started writing poems. I even won first prize in poetry writing in my school.

But then life became hectic — preparing for competitive exams, IIT, XLRI, a hectic career etc.

It was only at the age of 41 that I got back to writing. I was just recovering from a paralysing onset of an acute case of autoimmune neuropathy. I wanted to keep my mind distracted. So I started blogging. The genre I chose was humour. Because writing humorous posts kept me sane instead of being overwhelmed by the way my body was going to pieces.

I had to be admitted to the hospital every two months for infusions of immunoglobulin. I would sit up on the hospital bed and write my blogs. It was only when I decided to go to Chicago for 3 months to undergo the experimental treatment of stem cell transplant that I seriously started contemplating writing a book. Carried away by Harry Potter, at first I decided to write a fantasy fiction for Young Adults. But it was way too boring.

And then the infusion of chemo, rituximab and ATG started. Toxic substances that could put rat poison to shame. It took time for my battered body to recover. But once it started mending, it kept on improving. I felt on top of the world.

This is when I decided I should write a whacky, funny book. The premise of the book was so absurd and so outrageous that every page was a self-discover for me — self-discovery of just how ridiculous I could get my mind to think.

Writing ‘Oops the Mighty Gurgle’ kept my mood bubbling with humour. Thinking of absurd story plots and coming up with progressively more mad humour kept pumping dopamine in my brain. I was on a constant high.

After many rejections, the book got published. It did quite well— as far as children’s books go. But my protagonist, ‘Oops’, the evolved pumpkin from the future who had travelled back in time to save humanity from destruction, had ended up saving my life.

I always say, ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get humorous’. Would you agree?

#humour #resilience #BoundlessWithRamG #motivationalspeakers #happiness