You may recall how many top sportsmen suffer a string of failures. The journalists write them off, the fans think the player should quit. They said that to Sachin, they said that to Vishy. But the thing that makes them superstars is their mental approach towards their chosen sport. Niranjan Navalgund, the novelist and GM nom holder was in a similar situation. He tells you in his inimitable style, how he changed his mental approach, and became a much stronger chess player than he ever was. Read this Q&A and change your game forever.

Niranjan Navalgund is famous for his novella 'The Lively Library & Unlikely Romance'. After launching the book last year, attending various seminars and writing for various blogs, he finally found time for his chess. This January, at the Delhi Grandmaster International Open, he delivered his best performance till date. It resulted in a maiden grandmaster norm and an Elo surge of 81 points. Revamping his game successfully made all the difference. In this article, he talks about how he changed his mental approach and the factors that contributed to his tournament success before the Delhi Open.

He has been a former National under-17 Champion, Silver medalist in the under-18 Commonwealth, Gold in under-18 Asian team and champion of the strongest state championship - the Tamil Nadu Open. You might expect a guy with a career high Elo of 2309 to be writing something about chess! But meet Niranjan Navalgund - The man with diverse talents! Niranjan is not only a strong chess player but also a prolific writer and today is the launch of the first book authored by him - The lively library and an unlikely romance! In this article Niri shares with us his journey of how he maintained his passion in chess and writing and excelled at both of them.