Review: The Life and Lessons of a Young Author by Sunayna Prasad

Reflections with instructions from a young writer, Sunayna Prasad’s manual, The Life and Lessons of a Young Author, is a solid source of information about creating books in the 21^st century.

By the time Prasad was 25, she had already had successes and failures in the complex, mostly online, world of writing and publishing. When she was a child she began writing stories, illustrating them with her own drawings. By third grade she had written a complete chapter book. Then followed a lull in her creative life, until age 16 when a full-blown idea came into her head – a novel about a girl who could talk to animals. She worked on a final copy and began to research how to get her book published.

The author is refreshingly frank about her mistakes, freely recounting how her feelings about her creative “baby” sometimes got in her way. When she was criticized or given advice, she was at times reluctant to change her work accordingly, though she does learn this skill in time.

Unable to find a traditional publisher (that can take years, she warns) she settled on self-publishing for her first novel. She later published a sequel, though by then she realized that it’s nearly impossible to garner attention for one’s creative product without considerable advance work to build a fan base. Reception for her books was initially lukewarm, but she learned as she went – about beta readers, paid reviews (but only from honest sources), blogging, and other tricks of the trade that current writers need to grasp.

Prasad writes with great confidence, making her youthful naivete about (and gradual understanding of) a writer’s work the basis for this practical guide. Her target audience – young writers – will gather cues from her setbacks and roadblocks on the way to potential achievement. Sifting through her short but educational career as a writer, she offers the following kernels of beneficial advice: get used to rejection since not everyone will like your work, don’t use friends and family as beta readers or reviewers since they will be biased, read books in the genre you are writing, study the style of authors in your genre, be aware that sequel books in a series must be able to stand on their own, learn to “kill your darlings” as the old expression goes – get rid of portions of your work that are less skillfully written or that do not relate directly to the plot, or that more than one critic has cited for some weakness.

In general her message is to learn from your mistakes, and don’t be afraid to make them. Though Prasad is young herself and may not on first glance be able to impart the wisdom of someone who has had years in the business, it is this specifically which makes the book effective for young writers, as she seems a kindred spirit on a similar path, and her experience comes entirely in the internet era. That said, “young” is relative, so if you are just starting out late in life there are lessons to be learned from her experience.

At 30 pages, the book could have gone a lot deeper into its subject, but what is here is endearing and sincere, and should help motivate those who are just getting started with writing and publishing.