It was late, and Veer had not spoken for a while.
Ved noticed. He always did.
📖 Ved
Something is sitting heavily on you tonight.
🦁 Veer Singh
What if I write this book, and nobody buys it?
Ved did not answer right away. He let the question sit in the quiet room with them.
📖 Ved
That is a real fear. I will not pretend it is not.
🦁 Veer Singh
I have put so much into it already. I do not know what I would do if it meant nothing to anyone.
📖 Ved
Tell me, Veer. Before you decided to write it, did you write it to be bought, or to be said?
Veer thought for a long moment.
🦁 Veer Singh
To be said, I think. There was something I needed to put into words.
📖 Ved
Then it has already succeeded once, the moment it was written. Everything after that is a second kind of success, not the only one.
🦁 Veer Singh
But surely sales matter too.
📖 Ved
They do. I will not tell you otherwise. But no author, however great, has ever controlled how many people buy a book on the day it is published.
What every author controls is whether the book was worth writing honestly and well.
Ved reached for a slim, unassuming book from a lower shelf.
📖 Ved
This one sold to almost no one in its first year. Today, it is still read, quietly, by exactly the people who needed it.
🦁 Veer Singh
So a slow beginning does not mean it failed.
📖 Ved
Books rarely announce their worth immediately. Some take years to find their reader. What matters is that the reader, when they arrive, finds something true waiting for them.
Veer looked at his own pages, still unfinished, and felt the weight on him ease, just slightly.
🦁 Veer Singh
Then I suppose the fear does not go away. I just stop letting it decide whether I finish the book.
📖 Ved
That is exactly it, Veer. Write it because it deserves to exist. Let the rest arrive in its own time.
Veer picked up his pen again, and this time, the fear sat quietly beside him instead of in front of him.
