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

Smriti, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

I believe the zeal to keep learning 0.1% everyday is all that takes to be successful. It is important to keep updating yourself with new techniques and technologies to cope up in this competitive environment. Being stagnant is boring as well as injurious to health. I am presently working with the Embassy of the Republic of Congo as Secretary Incharge (Project Monitoring) but I joined as a receptionist. I had to unlearn a lot of things and learn even much more than than to reach this position. Also, in my journey of being an author, I was an amateur in the beginning, I had to practice and learn everyday in order to receive an award of best poetess and best blogger.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a Delhi girl and an avid dreamer. I work as a Secretary Incharge (Project Monitoring) in a Diplomatic Mission by profession and a writer by passion. I began writing at school and now it’s been almost two decades. I recognized myself as a designer when I started working with Unicorn Magazine. I joined the magazine as Assistant Editor but my creativity led me to some other direction and today, I am the Creative Director of Unicorn. I am a compiler, a published author and co-author in multiple anthologies.

Poetry is my first love. I have bagged numerous awards for valuable contribution to the Literature World. I won the “Best Author” (Poetry category) Award 2021 by Priyasi Publications, Women Achiever Award 2021 by Priyasi Publications, Special Mention Award 2021 by Cherry Book Awards for the category “Best Author – Poetry 2021” and Poetic Caesura Book Awards 2.0 for the category “Poetry”, Modern Literary Stars of India 2022 by Cheery book Awards, Tagore Sahitya Samman by Priyasi Publications and Gifted Literary Star 2023 by Cherry Book Awards.

As destiny had something else stored for me apart from poetry my forte changed to blogging. I started blogging – another interesting format of writing on renowned platforms like Youth ki Awaaz and Womensweb.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

My resilience can be illustrated in my writing journey. I started writing when I was at school and as I mentioned earlier I was an amateur. I started posting my writings in college and honestly the feedback I received was not that welcoming. Though my writings were very relatable but most of the times grammatically incorrect. That was the first obstacle I faced and then as I progressed in my writing, I faced other challenges too. But I learnt and improved at every step, I kept my spirits high and didn’t let those challenges stop me. There was time when I experienced writer’s block and even I wasn’t aware about this term earlier. It was the most torturing phase of my life as my brain used to produce so many ideas but my fingers used to refuse to pen them down. I really had to work on myself, took help from my friends and made every possible effort to come out of that phase. My hardwork really paid me off, I did come out of that phase with a bang. I was back on track, I started blogging every single day and one of my blogs got 1 million reads.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Dr. Romila Chitturi is the Founder/Editor in Chief of Unicorn Magazine and I met her on instagram. She is my boss, editor, mentor, guiding angel and much more. She used to organize lot of poetry contests on instagram and I was a regular participant. I don’t know if she was biased (kidding) or it was my talent, I used to won most of the contests. I always mention this that COVID proved to be a blessing in disguise for me as I published my first book in 2020 and second I met Romila Didi. She not only gave me opportunities to grow but a lot of exposure too; both professional and personal. We are 2 states as she lives in Hyderabad and I belong to Delhi. We met for the first time in person in November 2021 in Bangalore. It was an experience of a lifetime.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pssmriti/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smriti-malhotra-5338748b/
• Other: https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/author/smritimalhotra