By Isabella Zarate
When it comes to writing Ekta Garg is a jack of all trades.
With years of writing experience, time as a freelance editor, seats in short story judging competitions, and now a published book, “Words and stories have always been a part of my life,” Garg shared.
At a young age, Garg discovered her love for words. By the time she was eight, she had found herself working on poetry and drafting short essays.
Through elementary school, Garg became involved in spelling bees and competitions. Her achievements include four South Carolina State titles, one regional title, and participation in two national competitions.
“It was sort of just a natural thing,” Garg explained.
In high school, Garg carried out her passion by working on the school yearbook.
Moving on from her childhood years, Garg didn’t let her love for language go.
Attending the University of South Carolina and earning a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism while working for the campus literary magazine, and later earning her master’s in magazine publishing from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern only heightened her interests of the field.
“It started out definitely with a love of writing and language, and my journalism training sort of fed into that.”
From there Garg took on various titles such as blogger, editor, book reviewer, and even short story judge. “I kind of have a whole bunch of different lenses to look at,” she said.
It was not until recently that Garg picked up one of her most cherished job titles, author.
About eight years ago Garg was enjoying a holiday movie with her children when her mind began to wander.
“I was watching the Polar Express with my kids and I sort of started thinking about elves and Christmas.”
Though, the writing process did not begin right away. “I didn’t write the first draft until probably 2015.”
Before then, Garg took “the little sprinkles of ideas” that she got from the movie and decided to use them in a writing exercise.
“’The Truth about Elves’ is something I wrote a while ago. I never really planned for it to be my first published book. But I am very grateful that it is.”
The novella was not Garg’s first attempt at being a published author.
“I wrote a novel way back in college,” she said. “It will probably never see the light of day, and that’s totally fine.”
Garg took some newfound knowledge from the experience. She claims that she learned more about what it takes to be an author. Explaining, she shared how she thinks that drafting a book “takes a different sort of mindset.”
From there, Garg later took that information and drafted another book. This time she searched for publishers in hopes that someone would pick the book up; however, she found there was no traction with this novel either.
“It’s fine sitting in the drawer.”
As for her recent, and first published book, “The Truth About Elves,” things worked out in Garg’s favor.
Though she had never considered authoring a book about Christmas she has since discovered that she is “fascinated with stories that kind of bring the intersection between the ideas of grief and magic and hope” – a common theme amongst various holiday and Christmas stories.
With that in mind, Garg dove deeper into her research and started putting a story together.
After lots of brainstorming Garg was drawn to the idea of an elf, who was afraid of flying, who would help Santa get around the world by plane. With that Garg began to look up plane crashes and gather some more information. From there she found a particular crash that she references in her book.
“The incident that happens in the book is taken pretty much from what happened in real life,” she said. And from that incident, Garg found her main character.
“The minute I read about that incident it was literally like Curtis just fell into my brain and just started telling his story.”
“The more I was listening to him as the main character and the more brainstorming I did on my own it was like the two were kind of working in tandem.”
As Curtis told his story and Garg wrote down the words, the book, the characters, and Garg’s career as a published author all came to life.
Before the tale of Curtis made it to publishing, Garg explained how she entered a version of the text in a long-form story contest, but it did not seem to gather much interest.
At that point in the process Garg “thought maybe I’m just going to leave this sitting on my hard drive.”
Luckily, the book and its characters had other plans. “Curtis would just not let me.”
And as the lead of the book encouraged Garg to not give up, she began to pursue publishing companies.
“At the beginning of this year, I decided to go for broke and see what happened when I submitted it to a publisher.”
Thanks to Curtis’ silent nudge, Garg partnered with Atmosphere Press to publish “The Truth about Elves.”
The Mahomet Public Library will host Garg for a meet-and-greet and book signing on December 12th from 2-4 p.m.
Note: This book is geared toward adults.
More information and a link to purchase the book can be found on this website: https://atmospherepress.com/books/the-truth-about-elves-by-ekta-r-garg/
Additional information about the author is linked here: https://ektargarg.com
