Interviewtimes 
Akshay Kumar is a software engineer from Patna, Bihar. He loves to travel in his free time. He is a mountain traveler and has covered almost every hill station located in Northern India. Also, he has a keen interest in cooking and photography. To conclude, he has this goal to accomplish everything that he dreamt of and wants to shape his life towards it. Recently he has published his book ‘With You’ with ‘The Write Order Publications.’ Below are the answers he responded to Interview Times questionnaire:-
Q1- What inspired you to write a book?
Answer- I had this story in my mind for a while now. One day, I randomly shared this story with my friends, and they liked it a lot and pushed me to work more on this. At first, I hesitated but when I started penning it down, I got the rhythm and slowly things started to fall in place. With time, I was able to build the characters and the emotions. So I guess that little push from my friends gave me the confidence to write a novel as they believed that this story has the potential to do well. So I would like to give them the credits.
Q2- What are your life goals?
Answer- I dream big but I set minor goals to achieve those dreams. The ultimate goal was to add author as the prefix to my name, which got fulfilled with my book, ”WITHYOU”. And secondly, I want to learn more and more technologies. I want to learn more about cloud computing and its functionalities. Being from the IT industry, I just want to be that guy who can handle miscellaneous work with ease. That’s the current minor goal because I have that major dream to work in the topmost IT companies in the world. But there are many more dreams to fulfill and I’m taking baby steps towards that too. I keep on setting new objectives and plan my efforts to achieve those.
Q3- You are a software engineer, how did you manage your time for writing?
Answer- When I decided to develop this book, I fixed one date. I chose to complete this story in a month. My office hour usually concludes by 6 pm, so I started giving 3 more hours to my office time. I pretended that my working hours endure till 9 pm. So it didn’t stray me from my writing work. I took it very sincerely. It was very tough in the beginning, considering 12 hours of work, but I had to do it somehow and with time, I got that progress and completed the book on that exact date I mentioned on the calendar.
Q4- What difficulties did you faced writing your maiden book?
Answer- Writing is not easy, it’s a very tough assignment, to be honest. It requires a lot of patience and allegiance. In the beginning, I used to write 3 pages and I was eliminating 2 of them. I couldn’t see any development at the end of the first week. I got frustrated and at one time I even gave up. But I pushed myself a bit because I wanted to do this desperately. One thing kept running in my mind to utilize this time and finish it because I knew if I couldn’t complete this now, it won’t be happening ever again. So I started giving it more time. I started sitting in front of my laptop and gave my intent to this work. And with time, I started enjoying my work and I was able to finish it.
Q5- What tips would you like to give to people who wants to write a book?
Answer- Complete your book within one month, this is what I would like to counsel people who are willing to write a book. In my opinion, there’s no point in spending months and months just to complete your one project. You must be having copious ideas and you want to write everything down and there’s so scarce time. I’m sure people out there want to write more and more tales. So I guess we need to work fast. Fix your slots and complete your work within that time frame, because it will make you more discipline towards your work. If you chose to write over months, I think you will get diverted from your work. Like in my case, I took too long to develop the characters, but when I started writing, I concluded it within a month.
Q6- Apart from cooking, photography and travelling what else interests you and why ?
Answer- I love outdoor activities. I’m not someone who will spend weekends consuming time in front of the laptops watching some web series or movies. I choose to play or devote myself to physical activities instead. I go to the gym regularly, it’s in my daily routine. Also, I’m a professional Volleyball and Table Tennis player, I have represented till the zonal level in these sports. So whenever I get the chance, you will see me on the court playing. And, I like to play cricket too. It’s like one of those things that fascinate me the most. I relish swimming. I love to dance, though I don’t know how to dance. These days I’m learning how to play the guitar. So I’m into a lot of activities. Remember the minor goals I talked about before. These are those few minor goals. They all are somehow equated with my major dreams.
Image Courtesy: Akshay Kumar
Anyone can find his book ‘With You’ on the link below,
https://www.amazon.in/dp/9390791421/ref=cm_sw_r_wa_api_glt_fabc_3ZXNZ7KZDN2NGQMTG2QA
