Inspired.

As the release date of a new book by Rashmi Bansal approaches, I am truly inspired, not just because her new book (Follow Every Rainbow) is about stories of 25 female entrepreneurs, but also because I finally see a direction to my dream.

Rashmi Bansal is a writer, entrepreneur and a youth expert. She is the author of four bestselling books on entrepreneurship – Stay Hungry Stay Foolish, Connect the Dots, I Have a Dream, and Poor Little Rich Slum.

After more than 140 posts on both my blogs and heaps of inspiration from fellow bloggers and friends, what gave me courage was stories of ordinary people taking risks to do what they genuinely love.

Enter inspiration number 2 – Amish Tripathi. Economic Times tells his story –

When Amish Tripathi finished writing The Immortals of Meluha three years back, he took it to virtually every publisher in the country. All of them rejected his work, the first of the Shiva trilogy, for reasons as varied as a book on gods would have no readership and that it would have no connect with youth. That’s when the alumnus of IIM Calcutta decided to do the next best thing: go back to his marketing textbooks and chart out a plan to publish and sell the book himself. Tripathi printed the first chapter and distributed it at all bookstores in a unique sampling initiative; alongside he got a movie trailer made for the book and uploaded it on YouTube. A year later, Tripathi published the second in the series, The Secret of the Nagas. Together, the two novels have sold over a million copies. And earlier this month, filmmaker Karan Johar bagged the rights to adapt The Immortals… for the big screen.

Read more here.

I quote Rashmi Bansal,

The qualities that I believe make for success are:
1) being pigheaded (believing in your story and way of writing when no one else will)
2) being ahead of your time (what you’ve written has not been seen before or done before)
3) being I-don’t-give-a-damn (I started doing this for fun, not to make serious money or a big career).

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So, now I have a dream (publishing a book), I am a pighead (I believe I can do it), I am not sure if I am ahead of my time (everyone has an opinion now-a-days, will my opinion count?) and I don’t give a damn (I really enjoy writing, not for money but to make my thoughts reach the crowd)

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P.S : I really like the idea of creating YouTube videos and distributing pamphlets for publicity – and mostly I’ll employ these.

P.P.S : Plz help me being one step closer to this dream – cast your vote!