Interview
How This Writer Plans Her Professional Schedule Based on Her Personal Activities
Writer Spotlight: An interview with Mukti Masih

As a publication on Medium, we have grown to over 170 writers in a year. We are excited to see what God is doing to get His Word out there.
Through this interview series, we want to share with you a little snapshot into the lives of our writers.
Mukti Masih lives in Indore, India. You’re invited to join us in learning a little bit about Mukti and what makes her tick.
When did you join Medium? What influenced your decision to join?
January 2016.
When did you join Koinonia? What attracted you to this publication?
2019. The Christian writing that I get to see and the way writers contribute — their writing style. Quite a lot of learning at Koinonia.
How long have you been writing and how did you come to it?
I have been writing since the age of eight. I wrote my first poem on environment conservation, it was titled ‘Our Earth Is A Ball’. Then I took to writing weekly journals, many times those written pieces became poetry, other times just essays and prose. I turn to writing whenever I have a lot brewing inside and I need to get it out of my system.
Who are some of the people who most influenced your decision to write?
There were two people who totally set me off to it. First, my father Rev Vishwas Masih who used to contribute regularly to newspapers. His influence was immense. Two, there was my teacher from school, she taught us Hindi language and she encouraged me to pursue writing. She just saw it in me somehow, even though I never shared any of my poetry with her. She just knew.
Where do you get your ideas? What inspires you?
Most of my ideas come from a personal experience I have had, a conviction I have felt while reading the Bible or talking to fellow Christians. Many times, the ideas also come from something I read on the web. I feel like younger writers inspire me a lot (I am in my late 30s). I love how writing has been evolving and how younger writers are changing the rules, exploring and experimenting with writing.
What do you like most / least about writing?
The best part of the writing process is how much it demands self-evaluation. It’s like you cannot write something you don’t mean. It demands you to be self-critical and introspecting.
What’s least likeable is to find energy to edit your pieces. That takes longer and sometimes it sucks.
How do you balance professional time with personal time?
I do the opposite. I plan my weekly professional schedule based on my personal activities. For instance, most of my closest friends live outside my town. So I plan my work according to my coffee dates with my friends. In the same way, my daily schedule is mostly about my reading, Netflix time and work-out time — based on these activities, I squeeze in all the work. I really am grateful that writing profession has been fruitful but it still doesn’t sum up my life.
What Medium publications/writers are you currently following?
There are more than 200 writers that I am following. I am most smitten by Kris Gage, I love how she writes — she just puts it out there without filter.
What are some of your favorite things? What makes you unique?
1] The joy of being a daughter of a living God.
2] The joy of being a happy single who has the time to encourage others.
3] The peace that comes from walking with God.
How is your faith reflected in your writing?
The non-commercial writing that I do, just cannot happen unless I mention about my faith. I cannot be completely honest in my writing without sharing how my faith affects my day-to-day decisions, how Christ carries me through difficult days. It’s so much part of my entity that it’s impossible to write even romantic poetry without talking about faith.
What are some things you learned from your own writing? From others?
There’s a tonne of things I have picked up/learnt from others’ writing —
1] Infusing personal experiences in the form of present anecdote, like it’s happening right now when the reader is reading the piece.
2] Editing ruthlessly. If a sentence doesn’t add to the overall story-telling, it needs to die.
3] Not all kinds of writing are the same and you will not hit the nail every single time. But that should not stop you from writing.
4] Stop romanticizing the process of writing. That is counterproductive. It’s important to consider yourself a usual, normal human being who has a God-given gift of writing. Nothing more, nothing less.
5] Writer’s ego is both good and bad.
What is your ultimate writing goal?
I want to publish a non-fiction religious book and my own anthology of poetry.
What advice do you have for a newbie on Medium?
Focus on the content, don’t worry too much about claps, recognition. Once you have built a good body of work, then you can market yourself better on Medium.
Where else can we find you on the Internet? Do you have a website, blog, Pinterest board etc?
Thanks, Mukti, for sharing a little bit of yourself with us today!
Stay tuned as we will be continuing our writer spotlight series with interviews of each of our other writers on Koinonia.
We are grateful for the fantastic writers we have and invite you to follow each of them here:
Co-editors of Koinonia: Bett Harris, Mishael Witty, Trudi Griffin, and Mary Gallagher.
Co-founders of Koinonia: Janis Cox and Kimberley Payne.

This story is published in Koinonia — stories by Christians to encourage, entertain, and empower you in your faith, food, fitness, family and fun.
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