Veer had spent the morning reading the biography of a well-known author.
By the time he closed the book, he felt smaller than when he had opened it.
🦁 Veer Singh
Ved, this author had written for twenty years before her first book was published.
📖 Ved
Yes. And before those twenty years, she had written for zero.
🦁 Veer Singh
That is what worries me. I have never published a book before.
Ved set his own pages down.
📖 Ved
Tell me, Veer, how many books do you think this author had published before the one you just read?
🦁 Veer Singh
None. It was her first.
📖 Ved
So a first-time author wrote the very book that made you feel you were not ready to be one.
Veer had no answer for that.
🦁 Veer Singh
I suppose I assumed publishers wait for someone to prove themselves first.
📖 Ved
Every published author was once a first-time author.
Shhalaj welcomes meaningful manuscripts from both new and experienced writers.
What matters is not how many books stand behind you. It is what stands inside the one in front of you.
🦁 Veer Singh
But how would you know if a first-time author's work is ready?
📖 Ved
The same way we know with anyone else. We read it.
Experience can sharpen a manuscript. It does not manufacture one.
A first-time author who has thought carefully, written honestly and has something worth saying is not behind anyone. They are simply at their beginning.
Ved reached for the biography Veer had been reading.
📖 Ved
Every name on every shelf in this library once belonged to someone who had written nothing yet.
Veer looked at the shelves again, and this time they did not feel quite so distant.
🦁 Veer Singh
So being new is not a disadvantage.
📖 Ved
It is simply where every author starts. The only difference between a first-time author and an experienced one is that one of them has not started yet.
Veer smiled, and for the first time that morning, the word "first" did not feel like a weakness.
It felt like a beginning.
