The art of writing is a deeply personal and often intricate journey, a dance between the mind and the blank page. For writers, the act of putting thoughts, emotions, and stories into words is more than just a skill; it's an intimate relationship, a passionate love affair with language and imagination but sometimes also exhausting and painstaking. As we celebrate the National Book Month, we exchange words with Amit Chaudhuri, Shehan Karunatilaka, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Deepti Kapoor on their heart-felt and tedious relationship with writing.
Shehan Karunatilaka
I do remember keeping diaries when I was around six or seven, maybe scribbling some story ideas, but yeah, it's very vague. There might have been some fan fiction as well. I'd, like try, even before fan fiction was a thing, like for Spider-Man, but it never got very far.
I think It was not until my thirties that I actually thought I'm gonna sit down and try my hand at writing. I wanted to be a musician. I was in advertising and so writing was my day job, but then I just came across a story and I thought to write it properly. I'd attempted it before, you know, how you sometimes write and then suddenly get fifty pages but then you don't know where to go and give up. I had many of those experiences, but I think this time perhaps I was ready. Also, when you're thirty, you have kind of lived a bit and you kind of know what you like and don't like. Like, when I was growing up, I knew a lot of writers who wanted to do it ever since they could read. Not the case with me. I was just a reader first and then eventually got into writing.
Deepti Kapoor
Exhausting, but not entirely exhausted! It's often hard to get that pure joy of creation when it becomes a profession. Writing a novel is extremely draining, and by the end of it you pretty much hate writing and hate words and have to wait a long time for the battery to recharge. I've found in recent years that I can only really enjoy writing between the hours of 3-8am. This is when the world is dark and quiet and there are no distractions. So I have two or three week periods where I get up very, very early and work like that every day with a very early night's sleep and in that darkness the spark is bright.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
I write because I can't imagine a life without it. It gives me a reason for being. It allows me to go deep into my imagination and share the worlds created there with readers. It is the most joyful thing. I love it, though I am often frustrated with the process and like others go through writer's blocks. I often have to throw away drafts and start again. I often have to revise significantly. But there is a special joy in creating, in feeling the story coming through you.
Amit Chaudhuri
After thirty years or so as a published writer, many things are clearer to me now as to why I decided not to embrace the realist novel the novel with character, plot and psychological development. Why I was not interested in the novel of the nation, why I was not interested in the big, global novels. When I started out with A Strange and Sublime Address, following that with Afternoon Raag, why I was compelled to write the way I did was not entirely clear. It's clearer now as to why I took the decisions I did. I've been able to think more about what is it that makes a work of fiction a work of fiction, and what is it that makes it compelling. What is it that we call fictionality? Is it just kind of inventing a character, bringing them into existence out of thin air? Is there something else that kind of makes a novel exciting, besides story and even character? What is it that absorbs us when we read? I've been able to think more about these things.
Words Platform Desk
Date 12.10.2023