(This article was written for Scroll.in. The full piece is here)
A few years ago, I thought of myself as a writer of humorous fiction. But now, three books down, it’s clear that the central theme of my writing is, and will continue to be, relationships in contemporary urban India.
I’ve looked at the first bumpy years of marriage, mid-life crises and divorce, and the struggles of a young woman with all her relationships – family, friends, love and her own self. And all of this has involved getting in deep and sometimes dirty into real-life relationships around me. Here are the methods that helped me in my writing. Each of these has also, to my delight, added back to my life.
Paying attention to livingEach of us has a wonderful story to tell. The emotions and experiences that we go through are both similar and vastly different from each other’s. My first book was largely autobiographical, but even with subsequent fiction-writing, I found, and continue to find, inspiration in the events in my own life as well as of those around me. And this is what I believe makes for the all-important factors of relevance and relatability.
As a writer, this is incredibly liberating, almost therapeutic, because I’m able to make sense even of failed personal relationships through the power and structure of storytelling. Even when I’m going through a rough patch, it helps to treat it as potential material.
(Read it all here)
A few years ago, I thought of myself as a writer of humorous fiction. But now, three books down, it’s clear that the central theme of my writing is, and will continue to be, relationships in contemporary urban India.
I’ve looked at the first bumpy years of marriage, mid-life crises and divorce, and the struggles of a young woman with all her relationships – family, friends, love and her own self. And all of this has involved getting in deep and sometimes dirty into real-life relationships around me. Here are the methods that helped me in my writing. Each of these has also, to my delight, added back to my life.
Paying attention to livingEach of us has a wonderful story to tell. The emotions and experiences that we go through are both similar and vastly different from each other’s. My first book was largely autobiographical, but even with subsequent fiction-writing, I found, and continue to find, inspiration in the events in my own life as well as of those around me. And this is what I believe makes for the all-important factors of relevance and relatability.
As a writer, this is incredibly liberating, almost therapeutic, because I’m able to make sense even of failed personal relationships through the power and structure of storytelling. Even when I’m going through a rough patch, it helps to treat it as potential material.
(Read it all here)
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