Prelude

I was invited to share my views on self-publishing recently where I was presenting some content to Executive Education Alumni of a renowned business school in India. I was looking for interesting facts about legendary authors, which is when I remembered reading somewhere that Ayn Rand published her working notes, outlines and character studies as writings in newspapers. Then I thought why couldn’t I do this for my own upcoming book (maybe). You know, put your money where your mouth is.

Voila, that’s it! Here goes the set of writings that could potentially transform into my next book, whether self-published or published through the regular publishing route, these would still remain as a set of blogposts and remind me of what went through my heart and mind during the birth of my First Child.

The next set of blogposts is an ode to Neo Mannava, my first child!

While, it did cross my mind that I should not take real names and hence write a fiction, but having self-published three books in the socializing domain (between 2016 to 2024), I realized that my subconscious mind is tuned to jump right into the content instead of building the character arcs or story setting etc. And in writing, I believe, like any other art form, the subconscious takes control. Your fingers keep typing your thoughts away before even you could realize what epic stuff you ended up writing. You realize this only when you revisit your writing after a decade or so. Ha! On that note, let’s move ahead.

So, while the book may look like a non-fiction, I will take every care to keep it as engaging as possible. And obviously, other than Neo, his mother’s name and his father’s name, all other names have been modified purposefully.

One may ask, why a book? Everyone has a child, what’s so special about your child or the bond that you have with your child? To them, I say, go ahead there is still time, write that book or blogpost or even an Instagram post if you are into it. If nothing, at least re-visit your mental notes from time to time. I say this and everyone would agree that there is no love in this world like that of a new born.

Whenever I sit to observe my child, a river of learnings, words, thoughts flow. I keep observing. I observe a lot. I generated the entire content for my self-published books purely through observations. Where do I store all these observations that I make about my child. Although, a picture would speak a thousand words, I wanted to go ahead and write those 1000 words too and more.

This book (or) set of blogposts spans through the gestation period to the point where Neo would turn 1.

While I have found a lifetime worth of treasure that I can slowly cash out, this period from when Neo was conceived to the point where he turns 1 is most special for me. And of course, I will keep writing about Neo (the lifetime worth of treasure), it could generate my retirement corpus and transform into the treasure for real.

Jokes apart, let me begin with the mission I set out here to achieve.

Neo means New or Gift (from divine), hence the name of the blogpost series will be “New Gift”. Ultimately the book could also be called the same.

–Varun Gowtham Mannava