Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Eshan Mahimkar. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Eshan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you walk us through some of the key steps that allowed you move beyond an idea and actually launch?

Every great project starts off with a great idea, so that’s where I started! During Summer 2022, I decided to enter the Creative writing competition for Coppell Gifted & Talented Association. I had already won 2 awards for my poetry through the Association. I had my first book published the year before, so I thought, why not try my hand at a short story? Hours of brainstorming later,I finally came up with a solid idea for my creative writing competition story. Once I had worked on it and finally submitted it, I knew I had the start of my second book! I had adapted the short story to the theme of my first book and it worked as my first chapter! I had so much to write about! Excitedly, I spent the whole summer just writing! Sometimes I typed so much that my hand started hurting! I was so excited to write this book that I didn’t realize how fast the time went by! My mom had to remind me so many times, “Eshan, this is your last warning. Come down for lunch!” And so, after 3 months of hard work, my second book was ready! Then came the big struggle of finding the title for my book. Luckily my dad is a wiz when it comes to catchy titles and he suggested a few for me to choose from. My mom helped me through the publishing process & finally my second book was published! ‘The Other Time’ was officially available on Amazon!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Hello readers! My name is Eshan Mahimkar, and I’m a 13-year-old award-winning author of poetry and short stories – both of which have won accolades and awards through the Coppell Gifted Association. I was always interested in reading. Most kids get in trouble for being naughty, I would get in trouble for reading too much! While that may seem unreasonable, trust me, getting grounded for reading is no fun! One time I read for 6 hours straight! From the time I woke up to when my parents came down to figure out what to eat for lunch, I was lost in the world of books. I was banned from reading books for a month! A little later, I realized, since I read so many books, I should try to write one myself! I worked with a mentor who coached me through the process of writing a novel. I worked on my first novel for 3 months and finally finished my first book, ‘The Endless Quest – The Other Half’. After the summer ended, with me starting middle school, I didn’t have much time to keep writing until…the next summer rolled around! That summer I was determined to make my second book better than the first, so I worked really hard at that goal until I published my second book as well! I think I am the most proud of my second book. I used all the things I learned when writing my first book to make my second book better!

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

In school, we are taught about writing in a specific style – an introduction paragraph, 3 body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph. Well, this doesn’t exactly work when you’re writing a book! Writing a book is a lot different than writing essays in school. I had to mentally train myself to break the habit when I found myself writing my chapters in this format. It was hard to unlearn but unless I did that, my book just wouldn’t flow well.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I wish I had learned the art of touch typing much earlier than I did. That may not seem like much to you all but I typed my first and my second book using my two pointer fingers! Do you know how long it takes? In school, in a class called IExplore, we learned how to touch type. It changed my whole outlook on typing!! If I had learned this skill, instead of using the whole summer to write my book, I might’ve been able to cut that time in half!

Contact Info:

• Other: Email: [email protected]