Writing can be an innate skill or an acquired talent. It could also be a passion for someone, and to be successful at it, you must be able to play with words and create your own world out of them. When you understand the meaning of life and want to pen it down, you become an author. Let’s have a look at the list of famous accidental authors who had no intention to become an author but went on to influence a lot of lives with their writings. So, let us have a look at who these accidental authors are.
Accidental Authors
RAVINDER SINGH
Who is Ravinder Singh?
Ravinder Singh was born on February 4, 1982, in Burla, Odisha, in a Sikh priest family. Initially, he attended Guru Nanak Public School in Odisha. He eventually completed his engineering degree at Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College in Karnataka as a Computer Science Major. Ravi began working with Infosys in Bhubaneswar after finishing his engineering degree.
He eventually earned his MBA at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. Ravinder Singh comes from a well-educated family who believed in the power of education to change the world positively. After finishing his schooling, the writer worked for the global information technology hub Infosys before moving on to Microsoft and then becoming a full-time writer.
What’s his story?
Multi-crore deals are being signed by writers. Before Ravinder Singh published “I Too Had A Love Story”, he hadn’t read a single book. At the time, Ravi was working at Infosys as a program analyst. He was pursuing his MBA at ISB when the second book was published. Working as a senior project manager at Microsoft two years ago, while working on his third book, he realized that he wasn’t happy. “While my thoughts kept returning to writing, Microsoft was my ideal job, and I was earning a wonderful income that was nearly unreasonable,” says Ravinder.
Ravinder took a major risk and left his dream career to pursue his passion for writing full-time. He is now doing something that entirely fulfils him and established himself as one of the most successful writers.
In 2007, his debut book, “I too had a lovely story,” was inspired by the tragic demise of his then-girlfriend five days before their planned wedding. Ravi’s life has turned upside down and he started writing to cope with the loss. “This was not how I wanted my story to end, I was certain. I wanted to recreate my experience, so I began writing about my eight-month relationship with Khushi. That’s how I Had a Love Story came to be.” Ravinder says. The book went on to sell over a million copies, thereby immortalizing Khushi. Ravi’s then-girlfriend is talked of as if she is still alive, which is what drives him to keep going.
CHETAN BHAGAT
Who is Chetan bhagat?
Baghat was born on April 22, 1974, in Delhi, India, into a traditional Punjabi bourgeois family. His father was a lieutenant colonel in the Indian army, while his mother was working in the government’s agriculture department. He got the majority of his education in his homeland. He joined Army Public School in 1978 and went to the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, where he majored in Mechanical Engineering.
Following that, he attended the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and married Anusha Suryanarayanan, a fellow student, in 1998. He came to Hong Kong with his family after college and worked as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs for eleven years. When he returned to India, he relocated from New Delhi to Mumbai. With the change, he also changed his job path and pursued his passion for writing.
What’s his story?
Chetan Bhagat realized the value of social recognition for the first time in his life when he obtained 76% in his 10th board exams. Friends, relatives, and acquaintances referred to him as an “average student.” “I was quite uncomfortable with this decision and felt like I was being written off,” Bhagat recalls.
He believed that the only way to alter that label was to gain admission to a famous college. He put all of his focus on that for the following two years, and in 1991, he enrolled at IIT (the Indian Institute of Technology) Delhi. “Being admitted to an IIT completely transforms how the rest of the world perceives you, as well as your personal perception of yourself. Suddenly, you are seen as a ‘great student’ and an ‘achiever.’ It also boosts your confidence and opens up new doors,” Bhagat explains. Following his engineering degree from IIT, he acquired a business degree from the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), which landed him a job in an international bank. Despite living the middle-class Indian dream, Bhagat claims he did not find the satisfaction that he used to feel when composing plays for university events.
To break up the monotony of his profession, he began writing again, largely about his adventures at IIT Delhi. After years of battling to find a publisher, his partly autobiographical novella, Five Point Someone, was ultimately published as a novel in 2004. He says he never intended it to be a big success; all he wanted was to give his “hobby book” to IIT friends. “It was never intended to debut me as a novelist,” Bhagat explains. “However, it transformed my life.” It provided me with a new career, a new route, and a level of recognition I could never have anticipated.” It has sold over a million copies as of today, which is unparalleled in Indian publishing.
The film Three Idiots, based on Five Point Someone, became one of the highest-grossing Hindi blockbusters of all time in 2009. “I was already reasonably well-known and popular at the time, but the movie made me a celebrity and established my reputation as a writer,” Bhagat adds. Then, in 2014, Bhagat’s narrative of success in print and on-screen continued with the publication of 2 States, a movie based on his book 2 States: The Story of My Marriage.
After that, Bhagat gradually transitioned into a new industry, offering his ideas as a columnist on national affairs. “I’d hate to be called an intellectual,” he says. “I’m a keen watcher of what’s going on around me. I was among the first to forecast Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rise to national prominence. The rise of social media and my relationship with the new India has aided my evolution as a thought promoter.” And this metamorphosis marks the fourth watershed moment in the bestselling author’s life.
El JAMES
Who is El James?
Erika Mitchell was born in Willesden, Middlesex, on March 7, 1963, to a Chilean mother and a BBC cameraman father. She grew up in the county of Buckinghamshire. James attended the independent Pipers Corner School and Wycombe High School, a public grammar school for females in the Buckinghamshire town of High Wycombe, before attending the University of Kent in South East England to study history. In 1987, she married Niall Leonard, a Northern Irish novelist, and screenwriter, and the couple has two boys. They live in Brentford, West London, as of 2012.
What’s Her Story?
Stephenie Meyer, the writer of the Twilight series, motivated James to begin writing. Under the pen name “Snowqueen’s Icedragon,” James published a story titled Master of the Universe on a Twilight fan fiction website. A few days later, she posted the account on her website.
James eventually extended Master of the Universe into an original trilogy after eliminating allusions to Twilight, a method known in fanfiction circles as “filing off the serial numbers.” She self-published the first novel as an eBook and a print-on-demand hardcopy through The Writers’ Coffee Shop, an Australian virtual publisher, after receiving positive feedback from her readers. Word of the book immediately spread, resulting in a frenzy that resulted in James selling the publishing rights to Vintage Books in 2012.
What followed was the stuff of publishing fantasies: movie agreements, mainstream fandom, and the start of an international gold rush as publishers scrambled to find the next big stuff in fanfiction and self-publishing.
Of course, she began her career by publishing episodic Twilight fanfiction on a fanfiction website. But she didn’t stop there; she strongly encouraged input and then put it to good use. More authors should take advantage of one of the fanfiction world’s assets: the audience is eager to provide feedback or suggestions on what an author should alter or include in the following chapter or episode. James recognized this and used it to strengthen her writing as well as build a community of fans who are deeply involved in her work.
