A fellow writer recently emailed me, asking about my “process” for researching and writing my book. (It’s always flattering to be asked such things when I haven’t yet been published. Really, I want to ask, you care about how I produced my manuscript, little me without a publishing contract yet? It reminds me of a [...]
Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category
The stages of research, from near drowning to scuba diving
Posted in India, Writing, tagged book research, historical sources, La Martiniere, learning to swim, Lucknow, researching historical fiction, Scrivener, scuba diving on April 11, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Where is my magic writing cloud at the top of the tree?
Posted in Being the people, Dance/Arts, Writing, tagged artists colony, Enid Blyton, MacDowell Colony, Magic Faraway Tree, research, Sheila Dhar, writing colony, writing with children on March 28, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
People ask how I do it—children, freelance work, dance, volunteering, home and meals, writing, but the fact of the matter is, the secret is, very often I just don’t. And when I don’t, it’s the writing that is the first to go. (Well, except for when Next Doors is providing the meal, in which case [...]
To e or not to e: the dilemma of a so-called literary writer
Posted in Books, Writing, tagged ebooks, Faint Promise of Rain, Grub Street, literary fiction, Nathan Bransford, Paul Levy, publishing, self-publishing on February 20, 2012 | 3 Comments »
I questioned for a while whether to write about this on my blog. Would editors to whom I am, via my agent, submitting my manuscript be put off by my discussion of literary fiction and technology? By pondering aloud whether to pursue an e-book route or not would I be pushing potential publishers away? But [...]
Trailers, books, stories, hooks
Posted in Books, Writing, tagged book trailers, Faint Promise of Rain, Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes on February 10, 2012 | 2 Comments »
I last wrote about the book as object. Not so much the content of books, but their physical being, their presence in the landscape of one’s life. This week, after helping K with an assignment in which she had to use a little drawing and as the starting point for a whole story, and after [...]
Someone hand me a battering ram
Posted in Being the people, Writing, tagged being a writer, goals, publishing, starting a novel, writing on January 8, 2012 | 7 Comments »
I find myself confronted with an entirely new situation. I have a story in mind, and some partially-formed characters who are gradually emerging out of the haze, like a colorful and over-loaded truck whose contours and contents take shape in the smog as one approaches them headlong on a January morning in Delhi. (Horn OK [...]
Creative life, you say?
Posted in Being the people, Dance/Arts, Writing, tagged creative life, dance, kathak, time to write, Writer Unboxed, writing, writing life on November 15, 2011 | 1 Comment »
A couple of months ago, a friend—an artistic filmmaker—asked me: how do you sustain a creative life or even a creative project in the midst of children, work, home, health and volunteering? She asked this not as a rhetorical question, but as someone who seemed truly to expect that I would have an answer for [...]
“Too literary”: compliment, kiss of death, or call to action?
Posted in Writing, tagged literary fiction, publishing, rejection on October 29, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Today I am proud to report my first official rejection from an editor at a major publisher. It reads: “Thank you for sending me FAINT PROMISE OF RAIN by Anjali Mitter Duva. Ms. Duva is a beautiful writer – her prose is evocative, and her descriptions are riveting. There is such haunting atmosphere in these [...]
Unmoored
Posted in Writing, tagged manuscript, novel, novel series, planning a novel, prologue, revisions, writing on June 16, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
For over eight years, my writing was anchored in a single novel. I wrote the first paragraph, the prologue, in 2002, after reading a factoid in a travel guide which conjured up a strong image. Here’s the paragraph, the only one which has not changed one iota in the many (MANY) rounds of revisions: In [...]
The horror of Reading Logs
Posted in Parenting, Writing, tagged books for 7 year olds, books for first graders, reading, reading logs, summer reading on June 13, 2011 | 2 Comments »
A few months ago, we traveled to India. Yes, with the kids. Of course with the kids. In packing for the trip, I put a lot of thought into what to bring to entertain K, the first grader. We were lugging a lot of baby gear, and couldn’t bog ourselves down with the usual multitude [...]
