My friend (and literary agent) Eric Simonoff once told me this story about one of his clients: this writer was on an extended book tour, enjoying the readings and persevering through the time spent trudging through airports and alone in hotel rooms. Writers know that on such a tour you
The first inklings of a book are always vague—a glimpse of a character, perhaps a landscape. You then must discover the narrative through writing, rather than plan it. This is (of course) a personal reflection, relating to my own experience in writing within the genres of literary fiction and
A PDF version of this overly long post is available here .
I should begin with a disclaimer: I am not a Sanskritist. I took a couple of years of compulsory Sanskrit in middle school, was bored witless by the rote memorization of verb conjugations and by the anodyne assigned texts,
Fair warning: some (simplified) literary theory coming up. But all in the service of describing how Granthika works.
Granthika – of course – allows writers to create and manipulate text, but also enables writers to smoothly manage the structural components of their manuscripts (its chapters, sections, and scenes). Additionally – and crucially – it
Sometime in late 1996, I began working on a new novel. I had turned in my manuscript for my second book (a collection of short stories titled Love and Longing in Bombay), had taken a holiday from writing for a few months, and now was beset – again – by that restlessness