My Poem Writing Journey…

Nilay Saraf
3 min readOct 28, 2022

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What Persuaded Me?

It was the end of May or starting of June this year (2022), I was in my hostel room going through my Instagram. I came across my friend’s story. It was something about “writing a poem about someone” or something similar, don’t remember exactly. But, somehow that inspired me, persuaded me to pen down a poem. Thanks to @Shreya Roshan, the thought of writing a poem kept revolving around in my mind.

How did I Start Penning Down?

The next morning, I woke up, fired up my laptop and I don’t know how, but my fingers started typing on their own. A few minutes later, a beautiful poem, according to me, was in front of me. Heard from a friend it’s known as “being in the writer’s zone”. I liked it so much, I just wanted to post it or add it to my story somewhere.

So, I opened Canva app, selected A4 size and a nice aesthetic background. Next, I found a suitable cursive font and font size. I edited and proofread my poem, put in commas and split it in lines. I downloaded it on my phone and added it to my Instagram story. After a while, I received several positive reviews. Thanks @Canva for such wonderful creation options.

Persuasion for My 2nd Poem

Upon receiving positive views on my first poem, it somehow persuaded me to write a second poem. The following week, the same pattern repeated. I woke up, and the second poem was ready. This one did take some extra effort on my part. Had to figure out some rhyming words, some synonyms. At the end, it turned out to be a long poem and I think it was better than my previous, but that’s just my opinion.

Next, I repeated the same process of going on Canva, doing the editing and formatting and putting it on Instagram.

Publishing My Poems

I had seen some of my friends posting on instagram pictures of the books with their poem written in it. After a while, that thought even came to my head to get my poem published. This happened nearly a month ago (from October 2022).

I went online on google and started searching for publishers. Most of them just published online and about the remaining physical issue publishers, their submissions for their latest edition had already ended. I wanted to get my poems published in a physical book and so the search went on. A week passed by and I couldn’t find anyone, so I stopped searching and decided to wait for a few months for the submission of a new issue to start.

About 1–2 weeks after this, I met a friend who had got his poem published recently. So, I asked him about his publisher. He told me about this profile on Instagram, @Writer’s Pocket, that published anthologies. They have a selection process too. Thanks @Jimil Digaswala, for telling me about Writer’s Pocket.

So, I submitted my poems on their site and saw that I had to wait for my poems to get approved to get published. I got anxious, and started checking my mail every hour for the day. Then, I finally decided to leave it and wait for the mail notification. I guess, 2 days later, when I woke up after my afternoon sleep, I saw a mail notification from the publisher. Both of my poems got approved to get published in their latest upcoming issue. I was very happy to see the acceptance. I paid the publishing charges, got the certificate for publishing and now, I’m waiting for the issue to arrive, which is going to take approximately 2 months, as they have to proofread and do other editing work. Thank you @Writer’s Pocket for deciding to publish my poems.

My Poem Titles

I kept this to tell at the end. The titles of my poems are:-

  • There is a Woman in My Life
  • Everything Reminds Me of Her…

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