Publishing Tips from a Pre-Teen with Anushka Bhattacharjee

While we were all stuck at home during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people took the opportunity to learn something new. Maybe you taught yourself how to bake sourdough or speak another language. Anushka Bhattacharjee, a Grade 4 student from Toronto, decided to write the book "My Magic Mirror," a creative take on "The Three Little Pigs" fable. Anushka recently stopped by the podcast to chat about the inspiration, process and discipline behind writing and publishing her first book — all before she turned nine years old.

Transcript

[00:00:00.130] - Speaker 1
For every one book I complete, there's another six that I've only gone like a couple pages in and then just switched over to one book. So like, if you have so many ideas, just stick to maybe the one that you think is going to be be the smallest. So that's going to take less time to finish, so you'll have more time for the rest.

[00:00:31.410] - Speaker 2
Good day and welcome to the Leading with Nice Interview Series podcast. My name is Mathieu Yuill and we want to help tell your story so everybody gets it. Today, I'm so excited for our guest, Anushka Bhattacharjee. And the reason I'm excited, I was at a farmers market this summer and there's often people selling books at farmers markets, but when I went to this booth, it was just a handful of books and the author was there. But the author wasn't a 20-, 30-, or 40-plus something. It was a young woman who cannot legally drive but has written a handful of books. So here she is today. I asked her to come on because I wanted to hear about her creative process, how she comes up with ideas.

[00:01:24.060] - Speaker 1
Actually, I wrote two of the books.

[00:01:26.370] - Speaker 2
And her sister is here with her and we're going to have a great conversation. Anushka, welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:34.240] - Speaker 1
Thanks.

[00:01:35.200] - Speaker 2
So that's okay. The sister can stay. Don't worry, the more the merrier because I'm sure little sisters are never annoying, right? They're always great.

[00:01:42.900] - Speaker 1
Yeah, right.

[00:01:44.670] - Speaker 2
So listen, tell us about the books you've written. Tell us each title, hold it up and show it to us.

[00:01:49.540] - Speaker 1
Okay, so this one is my first book, my Magic Mirror, and it's about two kids who get sucked inside their magic mirror, and then their mirror teleports them into the story of the three little pigs. So they decide to rescue the two pigs that were originally eaten by the big bad wolf, except them to find out that someone wants to stop them. And then this is my second book, and it's called The Wishing Tree. And it's about three kids who need to get to the wishing tree in order to stop the wasp, an escaped convict. But the wishing Tree is surrounded by a bunch of evil kingdoms, so it's going to be hard getting to it. And then these two are the activity books for both of them, and they just each have a ton of fun.

[00:02:42.160] - Speaker 2
Stuff to do, like classwork again. It's funny, just before this phone call, I had a meeting with a couple of like 40 and 50 something folks that are working on a project and they were just having a really hard time getting started. Like, they had a lot of ideas, but they didn't know where to start. And so I'm really curious. First of all, you know, you're young, this is not lost on you. You obviously are aware of your age and you've accomplished so much in this writing. But where did you get the idea to even more. So how did you decide, okay, this is the idea I want to write about because I'm sure you had a lot of ideas, but how did you land on saying, this is what I want to write about?

[00:03:32.670] - Speaker 1
So I was just really bored during COVID, and then one day I realized that the end story to the original Three Little Pigs was really bugging me because the first two little pigs were originally eaten by the Big Bad Wolf, and so that story was really bugging me, so I decided to change it.

[00:03:56.250] - Speaker 2
Bacon's pretty tasty. So I get the Big Bad Wolf motives, but it sounds like you're trying to solve a problem. You didn't like the one ending, so you did something about it.

[00:04:07.600] - Speaker 1
Yeah.

[00:04:08.170] - Speaker 2
That's amazing. Where do you think, like, sometimes people adults get analysis paralysis, we call it, where they think too much about a problem and never actually get around to solving it. I'm just curious, what was it that you were able to just look at this problem, see how you want to solve it, and do it? Where did you kearns that? How did you know to do that?

[00:04:38.250] - Speaker 1
So I just decided to do it the easy way, just convincing the first two pigs to not build their house up straw and sticks.

[00:04:46.710] - Speaker 2
Okay.

[00:04:47.730] - Speaker 1
And then I decided that it should be a little bit more interesting. So then I added a twist at.

[00:04:53.380] - Speaker 2
The end that isn't me. I love that it's such a simple solution. Don't build your house out of bad materials. In between having the idea and actually sitting down to type it out, you had to make a decision to do it. Was your decision purely based on your boredom, or was there some other motivation for you?

[00:05:13.570] - Speaker 1
Well, I do like reading and writing a lot, so that's also one factor. But mostly it was because I was bored during the lockdown.

[00:05:24.120] - Speaker 2
Okay, that's a great I love it. I want to hear about the actual steps you took from idea to a book being in your hands. What were some of the steps that you had to take?

[00:05:34.950] - Speaker 1
First, I created the title, and then I started, like, I wrote a prologue that took a little bit of time to do. Then I added, like, a couple of chapters about the author, and then I showed it to my mom, and I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do with the manuscript Allie done, because I did think of actually publishing it to a book, but my mom said it was really good, so she said that it should get published, and so it did.

[00:06:09.270] - Speaker 2
How did you keep track of the steps, the things you had to do? Did you make a list? Did you create a document to follow? What did you do?

[00:06:19.510] - Speaker 1
I've read a lot of books, so I mostly, like, I know the order of everything, so I made a mental list, basically.

[00:06:28.400] - Speaker 2
Yeah. Well, you know what I love about that, what you just shared, I'm going to tell you how I might interpret what you said is you took a proven model. Like, you didn't try to reinvent anything. You just said, hey, look, all these books have been published. They have a successful model. I'm just going to copy that. Does that sound about right? Does that sound accurate? So this might have actually happened to you already when you've been out promoting your books, but I want to give you a hypothetical situation. Somebody comes up to you and says, oh, Anushka, I have a really good idea too, but I just don't know how to make it a real thing. I don't know how to take my idea and make it into reality. What are some tips you would give them or some advice you would give them?

[00:07:21.830] - Speaker 1
Just linga at first and maybe go on Google and search up some ideas, like on what to actually do, see if there's any like, there's something called Kickstarter, which it's like people fund your projects, so I don't really need to worry about that, the financial part that much.

[00:07:41.820] - Speaker 2
Yeah.

[00:07:42.730] - Speaker 1
So Kickstarter was a great discovery, and there's a lot of other ones, but first, I don't actually, like, I would need to know what they're even thinking of doing.

[00:07:55.930] - Speaker 2
So they need to really be really specific about what they're trying to do in order to, like, get started.

[00:08:01.970] - Speaker 1
Yeah.

[00:08:02.970] - Speaker 2
So, like, in your model, you had a very specific story you want to tell. You weren't just like, I want to write a book. You actually had a very specific story you wanted to tell.

[00:08:13.690] - Speaker 1
Yeah.

[00:08:14.390] - Speaker 2
And then you might tell them as well. Okay, you have your specific idea. What do you need to accomplish that? So in your case, I guess you did it all on computer, I imagine, correct?

[00:08:25.860] - Speaker 1
Yeah, on Google.

[00:08:27.600] - Speaker 2
And who did all the copying? Who did all the editing spell check for you?

[00:08:32.910] - Speaker 1
So first my mom did the editing, and then we got a professional editor.

[00:08:38.590] - Speaker 2
Oh, really?

[00:08:39.600] - Speaker 1
Yeah. And then the cover was done by an actual artist.

[00:08:44.930] - Speaker 2
You know what I love about this is you're telling me, Anushka, can I just tell you, there are people that have no clue what you're talking about. They have never thought, like, oh, I have an idea. I'm going to get an expert to do the part of it that I'm not very good at. So you hired, like, an expert copywriter. You hired an expert artist. You didn't try to do it all yourself.

[00:09:08.870] - Speaker 1
Yeah.

[00:09:09.490] - Speaker 2
Because are you an artist?

[00:09:11.310] - Speaker 1
Oh, yeah. For each of the books, there's, like, a couple of illustrations that I made. I'm going to try to find one because we only do one every chapter. So this one is one I did.

[00:09:24.830] - Speaker 2
Beautiful. So then why did you get somebody to do the cover?

[00:09:28.670] - Speaker 1
We just thought a professional illustrator would be good for the cover because when I was that age, I did not know that much about shading and everything like this.

[00:09:42.150] - Speaker 2
Yeah. Okay. I love it. I just think it's great. So often in the work I do, like you said, you are an artist, but you didn't know you're not a professional artist. There are times that in my work, even that I'm thinking, okay, a client wants X, Y, and Z. Well, I can do X and Y really well, but Zed, I'm kind of just so so at. I need to stop myself and be like, you know what? In order to put my best foot forward, I'm going to hire somebody who's an expert at Zed.

[00:10:11.860] - Speaker 1
Yeah.

[00:10:12.830] - Speaker 2
Okay. So I can imagine you did these projects, but it's not like the inspiration has stopped, has it? Are you still being inspired?

[00:10:22.230] - Speaker 1
Yeah, this one book, I'm planning to make an entire series out of it so that I wanted to end, like, with this ferry being rescued or something like that. And all of the books are building up to that one point.

[00:10:41.650] - Speaker 2
Okay. And so kind of like Mario not sure if you know Super Mario, he's always trying to go from castle to castle to save a princess, and at the end of the end of the game, you save the princess. Where do you get your inspiration from? What inspires you?

[00:10:57.930] - Speaker 1
So mainly it's just like I just get ideas from different DAREarts because I've had a couple of pretty weird dreams in my life.

[00:11:08.550] - Speaker 2
Do you have any tips for remembering your dreams? Sometimes I forget my dreams. So what do you do?

[00:11:14.970] - Speaker 1
I don't exactly forget my dreams, and whatever I do forget, I just deem as boring stuff.

[00:11:22.160] - Speaker 2
Okay. And is there a process for taking these DAREarts, these ideas, and refining them, like making them better? Is there a way you do that?

[00:11:34.530] - Speaker 1
I try describing the dreams as much as I can, and then there might be a couple of blank spots where they somehow get from here to all the way here so that I just fill it in with my own ideas.

[00:11:50.190] - Speaker 2
Do you have other people that you discuss them with? The kind of bounce them off each other? Or do you journal it? Do you write them down?

[00:12:00.810] - Speaker 1
For this particular book, I just went with it. And for the next few books, since it's like the first book in the series is always the easiest because the second book, you need to remember, like, oh, wait, maybe this person said something that could have been used in this book too, and then the plots are going to get harder and all that. So, like, in the second book of this series, I asked my mom for a little bit of help of not revealing everything before page 30 when it's 100 page books, right?

[00:12:40.000] - Speaker 2
Yeah. Because what I'm really curious about is people who are creative, like yourself, sometimes have a hard time refining and making their ideas the best they can be. And Anushka, what I think is really interesting about you is you seem to have figured out a way to get from idea to actual product multiple times. And how old are you now, like 25?

[00:13:05.510] - Speaker 1
Ten.

[00:13:06.180] - Speaker 2
You're ten. Exactly. I didn't actually think you're 25, just for the record. But you've got multiple projects completed where people that are three and four and five times your age still just have the idea rolling around in their head. So I'm always curious to learn how different artists and creative people get that idea out of their head and refine it and put into a product.

[00:13:30.990] - Speaker 1
Actually, I can kind of understand what the people who are two times, three times, five times older than me, I can see where they're getting at because for every one book I complete, there's another six that I've only gone like, a couple of pages in and then just switched over to one book. So if you have so many ideas and they're all, like, equally good, or like, you don't know which one is the best or anything, just stick to maybe the one that you think is going to be the smallest. So that's going to take less time to finish, so you'll have more time for the rest.

[00:14:09.520] - Speaker 2
That is really good advice. So when you have a lot of ideas, choose the one that will take you the least effort to get out the door to complete. Yeah, that's good advice.

[00:14:19.500] - Speaker 1
And like, really just sometimes just choose a random idea to follow through with.

[00:14:25.980] - Speaker 2
Give me an example of that for yourself.

[00:14:28.890] - Speaker 1
So let's see. After I finished the manuscript for this book, I decided there's a couple of months, like, there was one where they get like, some magic object, these kids, and then they randomly wish for something, and then it turns out to be double of what happened. So I only got as far as the title on that one, I think. And then there was another one. It's the same as Thing Happened except for this one. At least I got like, I think three pages into it before I'm like, okay, I cannot just keep on making the start to every single idea that I've ever had. So I decided to make another series. This book. The Wishing Tree. And so now what I'm focusing on is finishing because they're both series books. What I want to do now is that I just want to be finished with the series so that I can work on new series.

[00:15:45.550] - Speaker 2
Do you have other author friends or do you have like, a network of people that do the same kind of thing that you can talk to?

[00:15:55.550] - Speaker 1
We've met a couple of other chapter book authors. His name is Mike Doyle and he actually lives in Clayton, which is in the US. So we met him and he makes chapter books, which are mostly about adventure. Like, these kids go off to some adventure and defeat some goblin queen or something.

[00:16:25.710] - Speaker 2
I find myself, personally, like, I do a lot of marketing and communications type work, and I love talking to other marketing and communications professionals to get new ideas, to refine my craft, to create better processes. Do you do the same kind of thing with other authors?

[00:16:43.890] - Speaker 1
Not really, because each and every author has their own type of style of writing. Like, some people just focus on, like, humor books. Some people do like this type, that type. But my sister, she got inspired by me after I wrote this book, so she decided to copy me.

[00:17:11.710] - Speaker 2
Is that her book?

[00:17:12.980] - Speaker 1
Yeah, this is her book. And it's a picture book, so at least she didn't copy me in making a chapter book. And then she decided to make all the inner illustrations herself, and it turned out half bad.

[00:17:28.500] - Speaker 2
Okay, that should be a testimonial on her cover. These aren't half bad. Her sister. That'd be great. So listen, last question then, for you. How do you know when you're kind of in a rut or, like, the creative energy is, like, dragging? And what do you do in that moment? Like, how do you know when it's just you're not feeling it, so to speak?

[00:17:52.430] - Speaker 1
I just switched to another book because if you left me alone for all day, every single day for a year, I'd probably be very near to the finish with about 20 books, but maybe finished one in that entire time. So whenever I get bored with this book and I'm like, okay, I don't have any new ideas, I just switched to another one.

[00:18:18.650] - Speaker 2
Okay. Who are some of your favorite authors? Or what books do you like?

[00:18:24.470] - Speaker 1
One of my favorite authors is JK. Rowling, and then another one is Sophie Cleverly. She made this pilot in Ivy series. It's like they go to a school where there's a ton of evil people there. I like books by Brandon Sanderson.

[00:18:42.320] - Speaker 2
Okay.

[00:18:42.790] - Speaker 1
He's also another famous author. He's made actually, like, a lot of different types of books. One of them is, like, the Skyward series. It's like all the humans are sent to another planet.

[00:18:58.320] - Speaker 2
Okay.

[00:18:59.930] - Speaker 1
And they want to get back to Earth.

[00:19:03.300] - Speaker 2
Cool. And do you think you might one day write a TV show or a movie? Do you think your writing would take you that way?

[00:19:11.430] - Speaker 1
No, I want to stick to books. Like, writing a movie is, like, very hard because it's mostly action and you can't really describe what the character is thinking and all of that. That's why I prefer bucks over movies. Like the Harry Potter movies. I've watched them before, and I didn't really like them as much as the books because you didn't know what the characters were thinking. Living characters.

[00:19:40.160] - Speaker 2
Okay, fair enough. What's next then, for you? Like, what do you have coming out next? What should we look forward to.

[00:19:45.890] - Speaker 1
Actually, I finished the manuscript for two books, and I'm almost done all the illustrations for them. That's all that's left is, like, the editing, the cover and all of that. So the two books that I'm on the verge of completing is the sequel to this book, My Magic Mirror, which is called My Magic Tent. And then there's another one. I decided to make an educational book for once, not one about fantasy, and it's about the sun and everything.

[00:20:18.590] - Speaker 2
Okay, that's very cool. Is there a chance that I might be able to be a character in one of your books one day?

[00:20:24.870] - Speaker 1
Maybe.

[00:20:25.510] - Speaker 2
I'll take a maybe.

[00:20:26.740] - Speaker 1
Mainly I just use name generator. So unless your name is something like, really, I don't know, unique or something. Wells, what is it? Let me see.

[00:20:37.890] - Speaker 2
Matthew, I think mathieu. Yuill. Like the wise old sage who has led a life of contentment. I think that'd be a good character, maybe, who dispenses, like, kind of good advice to people. That would be a good character, I think.

[00:20:56.470] - Speaker 1
Or double crossing.

[00:21:00.990] - Speaker 2
I'll take it. Or double crossing accurate. Well, listen, I got to say thank you so much for taking time to speak with me. But, you know, you and I, we had this great conversation, but this didn't just happen. A lot of people helped make this happen. First of all, Naomi Grossman, who works here at Leading With Nice, she arranged the time for us to talk. She helped come up with the questions. She actually came up with the questions herself because she knows the things I like to ask, and she shared them with you. If you're seeing this on social media, there's two people to think. Jamie Hunter is our content manager. He does all the social media for Leading with Nice and promotes the podcast. Geoff Anhorn is our video editor. He makes the videos for Instagram, Facebook, etcetera. Amber is a project manager Leading with Nice. Wells, I've been working away talking to you. I can see our Slack channel blowing up with her, taking care of project. Austin Pomeroy is the audio editor, so he makes all my pauses and makes all of our audio sound nice and crisp. And of course, my wife Allison, while I'm down in the basement recording podcast, she makes sure the kids stay quiet upstairs, so if she didn't, I would have my kids jumping in like your sister was doing.

[00:22:19.680] - Speaker 2
And, of course, thank you to your mom. I think she helped us get this coordinated as well.

[00:22:23.890] - Speaker 1
Yeah.

[00:22:24.670] - Speaker 2
Where can people find your books? Where can they find out more about you?

[00:22:28.350] - Speaker 1
So mainly we go to a lot of events, but there's also we're on Facebook and Instagram and as well as a website.

[00:22:41.160] - Speaker 2
Well, listen, we will make sure if you want you definitely want to find Anushka. Can we do a selfie? Do you mind if I do a selfie with you?

[00:22:48.800] - Speaker 1
Okay.

[00:22:49.380] - Speaker 2
All right. Hold on. Here we go. Ready? Okay. Perfect. That's beautiful Anushka. Thank you so much. I can hardly wait to read your next books. I bought them at the fair and we have enjoyed them thoroughly in our house. I love the twists in the book. They're so creative and I guess. So, what, are you going into grade twelve this year?

[00:23:08.930] - Speaker 1
No, grade eight.

[00:23:10.650] - Speaker 2
Grade eight. Okay, typical. Most grade eight I know have three or four books under the belt.

[00:23:16.240] - Speaker 1
I'm actually going to grade five.

[00:23:18.020] - Speaker 2
Great. Five. Okay, stop it. Listen, I'm the one with the jokes in this podcast. And have a wonderful day.

[00:23:26.200] - Speaker 1
Bye.

[00:23:26.510] - Speaker 2
Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks.