#053: Ritu Bhathal – “Marriage Unarranged,” setting priorities, and poetry versus prose.

Ritu Bhathal is a blogger and author of fiction and poetry. She was born in Birmingham in the mid-1970s to migrant parents, hailing from Kenya but with Indian origin. Ritu’s colourful background has been a constant source of inspiration to her. From childhood, the joy of reading spurred her on to become creative in her writing, from fiction to poetry, winning small competitions at school and locally along the way.

As well as a wife, mother, daughter, sister, and teacher, Ritu also writes on her award-winning blog butismileanyway.com, which was awarded first place in the Best Overall Blog Category at the 2017 Annual Bloggers Bash Awards, and Best Book Blog in 2019. Ritu is happily married and living in Kent, with her Hubby Dearest, and two children, not forgetting the fur baby Sonu Singh.

In this episode we go deep into:

Where Ritu’s journey began
How life can prioritize over writing
Starting a blog on a whim without a plan
Indian family customs
How writing groups and accountability can help lift you up and keep you on track
Publishing Poetry vs a Novel
How having a support system is instrumental in the writing process
Stationary and her vast collection of brush pens
Being realistic when it comes to balancing everyday life and getting words written
What her writing advice is for new writers

Ritu answers questions from Patrons:

Yanni Jade: What was the most surprising part of your writing/publishing journey? Is there anything that stands out as particularly spectacular?
Dan Willcocks: What lessons did the school competitions teach you to prepare for writing longer works?
Meg Cowley: How do you take care of yourself and carve out time to create/publish/etc.

Find out more about Ritu:

https://ritubhathal.com

Links from the show:

Ritu’s blog:

https://butismileanyway.com

Get your Great Writers Share merchandise!

https://www.danielwillcocks.com/merch/gws

GWS Press books:

Collaboration for Authors: https://books2read.com/u/3G2jLn

Special thanks to:

Intro vocals: Persephone Rose

Show theme: Karl Hughes

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Thank you to my patrons:

David Hines

Harley Christensen

Jon Cronshaw

Jenn Mitchell

Innes Richens

Ian J Middleton

PT Hylton

Michael Anderle

Mark McClure

Katie Forrest

Yanni Jade

Meg Cowley

H.B. Lyne

Jo

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