Samyuktha Puligal
Curriculum Developer at Adobe
Blogger, Content Designer, Content Writer
Bengaluru, Karnataka
Q1. Please share your educational and professional journey?
Ever since my childhood I have always found my passion in writing. Even as a kid, I used to write letters to my father who was right in front of me standing. I have always loved letters and words. The same passion and interest led me to pursue my career in language and literature. I have completed my masters in English and Kannada literature. And the learning continues. There are some beautiful work of fiction and non-fiction in Kannada literature that are considered all time gems. Starting from 10th Century to this day, Kannada literature is flourishing with abundant knowledge and thought process. My education helped me have a step-up towards this direction and the ounce is on me to immerse in it by reading more and absorbing as much as I can, in this sea of knowledge.
I started my career as content writer and then I explored other corporate writing fields such as technical writing and instructional designing. Instructional design turned out to be most convincing and suitable career option for my nature and passion. The combination of writing, teaching and corporate system gelled well for me to pursue as my career.
The icing on the cake is, this career option allowed me to develop my personal passion of reading and writing too. Today, along with my job as Instructional designer, I am also a writer and a translator. I have written columns for Kannada online daily (called Avadhi) which has been published as a book (called Laptop Paradeyachege). I have also written articles for various dailies and magazines in Kannada language. I have translated two books (Miracle in the Andes & Rebel Sulthans) from English to Kannada. I have also published a memoir (called Dheemantha Chetana). It is about a biography of elder person in my family, who started a school exclusively for girls in Mandya district and also was an entrepreneur, who started a typing institute back then.
So, unlike the common myth about corporate culture which goes to tales such as 24/7 into busy lifestyle etc., my job has allowed me lot of freedom to mutually co-operate my work-passion-life balance well.
Q2. What did attract you towards Content Development and Writing?
For language and literature students, the seemingly convincing and approachable field of work is right after graduation would be teaching/lecturing/research. However, I somehow did not develop interest in teaching. By the time I finished my graduation, I had known that I am more expressive with words than speech. This led me explore other venues for my career, during when my cousin, who is in a top-notch position in a software giant, introduced me to content writing and content management system in a corporate setup. This, of-course is not directly related to my literary field, however, it gave me good exposure to corporate writing and allowed me to stretch my wings of creative writing flair. I then started exploring different kinds of corporate writing genres, such as; content writing, creative writing, technical writing and instructional designing.
Being a student of academics, Instructional design arena attracted my attention. Instructional teachers are very powerful teachers who play their words as chalkboards and dusters. So that is how, I ended up being an Instructional designer and a writer.
Q3. Which one skill do you like most about yourself and which one do you see as an area for improvement?
I think writing is my biggest strength and passion. At a very early stage of my life, my father, who is a teacher himself, identified this skill in me and guided me in the right direction of growth. I developed that skill and still working on it, as there is no end to learning. Later in my life, when I first met my life partner, I discussed with him about my passion for writing and since that day till now, he has been extremely supportive to hone my skills in this direction.
Reading is the area that I always see as an improvement. The more I read, the more I know, I have not read anything. The more I read, the better I can express myself in writing. So reading is the key for any writer.
Q4. Do you research on any topic before writing on it?
Yes. Research is a must. Though most of the times fiction writing (if that is what we are talking about here) is spontaneous and may not require specific research. Background reading helps a lot. I am not a very methodical researcher (I have seen many writers are very meticulous in their writings), I would like to know, learn things before I command writing about them. For example, when I started the translation of Rebel Sulthans, which is historical in nature, I had to read quite a lot of books and online articles, before I was ready to take up the translation.
My professional writing, on the other hand, needs very meticulous research, as every topic we write is new, every time. So, it is very hard to write on anything that is new and unknown to us. It is also very exciting and challenging to research and learn something new every time I take up a new project for work. Corporate writers are at such advantageous position, who can keep learning new topics and keep exploring.
Q5. Tell us about one of the moments which changed your perspective towards life?
I started the translation as a play. Initially, I used to take up small stories and try to re-write it in my language to see how it can be effectively changed and still retain the same meaning. So, this hobby allowed me to get serious with translations. When I actually started translation as a serious task, I could explore immense possibilities of a particular language. One can literally play with words, in a translation. Not just words, I soon realized that, the play is with different cultures too.
So when you learn a new language, you are not just learning some random words, you are also learning about a new culture, life, art, society and people. I realized that learning a new language is the base to exploring the world, within your own space. This learning journey has helped me sync more into languages and today I am learning Chinese, French and German along with some Indian native languages. To me, this is one of those moments that changed how I see the words, language and world.
Q6. What are the main skills require for Content Developer?
Reading, writing, more reading, more writing, drive to learn new things, explore and more than anything, interest. Young people who want to start their career as Content developer, as me, “what to write?”, there is only one answer to that, “anything. Write anything”. Writing needs lot of patience and interest on the topic, so the key is to be comfortable with words, language and more than anything, have interest to learn something new always.
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