It was early March when the great Sir Jeffrey Archer stopped by IIT Bombay for a visit during a book tour for his latest novel. He was being interviewed by the institute’s media body. They asked him “What advice would you impart to young aspiring authors of today?” and he said, “They should wait. Wait, until they have a wealth of experience. I started writing when I was 32.”

Upon hearing this, a young, star-struck writer with the first draft of his book in his drawer, bowed his head slightly, crestfallen. For he had not waited. He had rowed to where his creative juices took him.

Fast-forward a little more than a year later. I am now, at twenty-three years old, the proud author of the novel Here Be Dragons, published by the renowned Harper Collins. This puts me in the company of Fitzgerald and Hemingway who both debuted with published works at twenty-three and twenty-four respectively. (It’s been a longstanding dream to use those names in the same sentence as mine. Hue hue hue)

It isn’t only Archer, of course. A number of folks have told me I should hold off on that book till I was ‘experienced enough’. The problem maybe lies in the belief that young writers would lack the assurance of a much older writer. Which is, perhaps,true. But then assurance breeds comfort, and comfort is the death of literature.

Literature should not be comfortable. It should be prickly. It should gnaw at you. It should take you out to the garden yard and cannon you with the hose. And if there is one thing you can always trust a twenty-three year old with, it is cannoning with hoses.

But even then, with due respect to Sir Jeffrey Archer, the world has changed radically, so much so that one needn’t wait till thirty to accumulate the aforementioned ‘wealth of experience’. By the time I reached twenty-two, I had visited twelve countries, tasted more beers than I could count and met an assortment of strange and magical characters, all of whom deserve to be written into books. And I’m not even an avid traveler. My peers have traveled farther and seen more. And all of it on a shoe-string budget.

I’m a firm believer of the fact that all great writing (and art, for that matter) is borne out of some great disturbance. And if that is true, then the early twenties are ripe to be harvested for some electrifying novels. For what age-bracket could have as muchuncertainty as the new-adults? They’ve just graduated from the safe havens of a college campus, and are now finding their footing in the swamps of the big bad world outside.

It’s a mental hurricane. It’s a period when assignments and mid-terms suddenly make way for paying bills, doing laundry and navigating the alligator-infested back-waters of corporate social life. What you’re left with is a person with a child’s imagination and an adult’s woe of making rent. And to top off themountain of quarter-life adversities, is a chubby-faced demon that hovers over everything and threatens to destabilize every aspect of life. They call him cupid.

Now, give this reeling, rebellious and possibly-smitten young adult an empty page.

What do you think you’ll get?

A bloody masterpiece.