Anita Desai
I write down random notes composed of passing impressions, experiences, ruminations. Then, as they fill a notebook, I see they are not so random after all but have links and start stringing them together. Eventually that develops into a narrative that becomes the book. It is perhaps like finding scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and trying to fit them into a coherent pattern. It is the practice of turning what had seemed chaos into a composition, which is also a practice of turning the unconscious into the conscious.
Anjum Hasan
The sense that fiction can speak to the feelings we are all feeling. I still believe there is redemption in being able to talk about dark times – and I don’t believe the times are entirely dark. But I also hope that we can think more about things like form and style and not see novels as just dry reports on what’s happening. We are impatient with literary questions and I want to ask literary questions, while all the time telling a story, of course.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
I am very character-centric. I feel the person I am writing about, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, needs to come alive. For this reason, I make use of description, character analysis and scene creation to focus on dramatic moments that have changed the character’s life. Of course, when writing non-fiction, I must stay with the facts of the person’s life, but I can still select what I believe are the more dramatic moments.
Hernan Diaz
I think that fiction has a crucial relationship to truth, which is very unique. And it has its own epistemological position. It’s different from science, journalism, history or the discourse of the law, where again things need to be rigorously fact-checked and anchored in referential reality. Although fiction is not subjected to these protocols, it still has a very necessary and important relationship to truth. The relationship between fiction and truth, I think, has to do with the intersection of truth and beauty and emotion. And no other genre, discourse, or discipline. This is the realm of literature and that’s a very special thing I think at that intersection something essential happens, something that only literature can articulate and that’s why it’s so necessary that fiction tells us something about the experience while providing an experience at the same time.
Paul Lynch
Life is fundamentally strange and we don’t know who we are in the world most of the time. Ambiguity is actually a default state. We don’t know what’s coming, we don’t know the future. We act decisively all the time as human beings. We believe if I do this, this will be the outcome. This is the great human tragedy of all. This is what defines so much of Greek tragedy – that we act with certainty but we reap the crop of the unforeseen. And I think that writing should try and convey these things. I think that writing should articulate the fact that we’re in the labyrinth and that we don’t know where we are.
Koel Purie
I have to say writing is my zen. It’s the place where the noise from the world just comes to a standstill. Unlike some writers who go to cottage and write in isolation, I write amongst craziness. I have a kid, I have a house that I’m running, I have madness. And I’m writing amongst it all. I think I’ve always been a storyteller. So in some form or the other, I need to express myself. I’ve written my whole life.
Radhika Iyengar
While reporting, I’ve realised that one must learn to make patience a friend, ask informed questions, listen with empathy and attention and become a keen observer of the surroundings. The smallest gesture of an individual’s response to their environment, for instance, can reveal something significant about their personality.
Words Platform Desk
Date 30.01.2025