Art of novel writing

I have always treated authors with a sense of awe. The best of them are undoubtedly the shadows that guide us to the centre of our lives, give us perspectives and vision. They remain fiercely alive in our minds; inspiring us forever with their worldviews, words and distinct voices. I always get back to different pages, chapters and underlined sentences of my books during darker moments of my life to regain strength and gumption. At a time when everything seems to fall apart, my favourite authors such as Somerset Maugham, JM Coetzee and Ruskin Bond appear like angels — comforting and pampering me — clearing the signs of rain-heavy clouds of my life.

Yet I am sometimes astounded by their conviction; their complete submission to a divine calling. What could possibly be the skills required to be an imaginative novelist? According to Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish author, an imaginative novelist has to be childlike, irresponsible and playful. “Whenever I lose that child in me, I find it difficult to proceed with my novel. It is the biggest weapon of an imaginative novelist,” said Pamuk. Only such state of mind takes you to the centre of things, Pamuk believes. A romantic author also needs to be open to his desires and wants; open to dark recesses of his mind and new experiences. There should be no sense of boundary. An aspiring novelist gradually moves through life like a voyeur, living his half-baked yet intense life, not participating in life yet relishing every moment of it, till the end.

All authors struggle, at some point, with the problem of balance between individual and society, temptation and self-control, reality and fantasy, materialism and pragmatism, attachment and detachment. After all, the secret of those life-transforming tales is the secret of effective storytelling — to provide, slowly, the illusion of immensity; the uncanny sense that something fundamentally different is going to be revealed. In other words, it’s the art of stripping all virtues to redefine them.

Meghna Maiti