Colonel Cocktail shares insights into the messy yet meaningful process behind authoring “Perfectly Imperfect” and introduces the Extrapreneur Mindset concept. Kiran’s journey from an unsure author to a multi-faceted writer is chronicled, highlighting the importance of persistence and creativity. The book’s evolution, including illustrations and reader feedback, is discussed, emphasizing its unique format as an analog version of social media. The blog underscores the complexity of life and learning throughout this transformative journey .
Hi, Colonel Cocktail here. Welcome to The Vault.
I agree with Mrs. Bolt when she says that the Kiran writing process is messy but I call it- M&M or Messy and Meaningful. My focus is on meaning as it sheds light on a powerful concept in the book – The Extrapreneur Mindset.It’s a string of integrated words that start with Enjoy, and as we understand the meaning behind each of the words, we end with relationships that are meaningful, strong and have no expiry date.
Enjoy – > Truth -> Trust -> Guts -> Love -> Relationships
The best way to make the words of the Extrapreneur Mindset come to life is to share the behind-the-scenes process that Kiran used in authoring Perfectly Imperfect.
We all know that being an author is hard work, lonely with a high risk of failure. But by setting a goal to become an author (that nobody saw coming), by committing to learn a new skill, embracing an unfamiliar process, accepting the high risk of failure Kiran found a unique opportunity to acquire not one but many valuable new skills and while doing so stress tested all his executive functions impacted by ADHD. Today, he can also call himself a blogger, podcaster and comic strip writer. WoW!
How did he do it?
To start off, Kiran read a couple of best sellers on writing that confirmed the picture of a lonely author’s life. It did not deter him. He was confident that with his life experiences he had a series of books hidden in him waiting to come to life. But not any book. A book on his life. Serious yet funny, but wait, the maverick decided to throw in some pictures too. All this while he had no clue how to succeed.
But luck favours the brave and one morning at 5 am he realized that at the age of 56, most of his classmates had three decades of business knowledge in their heads that he could tap into, before they retired and hit the golf course. So, after sharing his vulnerabilities and his dreams with a few, the first advisory board was formed, staffed with an army general, a CEO and a wordsmith.
The first few shabby manuscripts were lovingly manoeuvred into the hands of a few family, friends and well-meaning fools. After chugging through a few pages, some voiced their concerns over Kiran’s career choice – “Was it really the right one?”
Undeterred, he wrote on. Fantasy soon turned to boring nonfiction. After rewriting number two (it felt like 106) on the brink of giving up, it dawned on him to treat his writing like something he has enjoyedsince the age of two. And, thus, he found his magic formula.
Let’s play with words!
The grumpy blank computer screen burst into life as it turned into a playground. The game to play and its rules was his to design. His opponents were created to match his mood swings. Game by game he began learning the art ofstringing his Fertile Imagination, Clumsy Creativity and Powerful Execution into words.
Writing soon became his voluntary obsession.
He shared his vision of creating a billion smiles at every opportunity with people he respected. The feedback was mixed but the one he cherished the most: the best place to learn more about oneself is to learn to survive in a strange place filled with odd people. This gem of wisdom was converted into Oh Landia and its pixies. Imagining them and creating them and bringing them to life is where his learning curve about ‘who am I’ exploded exponentially.
His ‘idea diarrhoea’ occurred most often in the early morning when he was half awake.Soon he had 80,000 words. But he had a problem. His words, though powerful, seemed to be popping up and down the pages and readers, despite their best intentions, were not able to pin them down. To calm them down, he found a partner in Stevie who with decades of editorial experience, accepted the challenge of making Kiran’s pop up and down words settle down.
Soon Kiran’s‘I’became ‘we’ and eventually they had a manuscript. It was double the number of words recommended for non-fiction books. To hell with the rules, Kiran said, and began to reinvent them as he went along. He knew he had a challenge. 80,000 words, 400 pages. You must be crazy, people told him. Readers today have short attention spans. You are up against Twitter, TikTok etc. Two-sec max attention spans.
With the help of a talented illustrator, Oh Landia came to life. A picture says a thousand words, so with 80,000 words, Kiran thought he would need 80 illustrations. Sanity prevailed and he settled for around thirty. From being somebody who had very little experience visualizing ethereal beings,his creativity gradually blossomed as hewas introduced to the world of moodboards.Honestly, he reallyenjoyed the learning process.
Perfectly Imperfect morphed into an analog version of social media. Inter-related short stories. If you don’t like one, swipe forward, if you do like one – swipe back as many times as you like. To match the captivating dancing visuals in social media, the beloved pixies were born.
Ok, now he hada book, populated with pixies.
Business leaders reading about pixies. You must be crazy, friends told him.
“Who can I test my concept on?” he was often heard muttering. Luckily as Kiran had a family of three hundred and more cousins,he found more than a few volunteers. Three were carefully selected. Their comments were positive and encouraging. But it was time to admit it was a complex book to read.
Kiran had a problem to fix. KISS or keep it simple stupid was thrown a lot around by well-wishers. He refused to bow down to simplify the book. Life is complex. Let’s get my words out to people to make them think and reflect. A few analytic minds were brought in and each chapter was mapped as a reader’s journey. The output graph was as volatile as the stock market in the first few days of melt down. But they realised it was a good data set and with a few rewrites (feel like number 216) the final manuscript was eventually ready for the publisher.
Now the hard work of marketing the book starts. I wonder what he will learn in this process.
And that was how the Extrapreneur Mindset concept was born and tested. It is a concept worth looking deeper into if you are looking for a way to develop a mindset that will guide you during as maverick a project as writing a book.