I’m delighted to have Indu Sundaresan on the blog today talking about her writing journey. For those who aren’t familiar with Indu’s novels, two come to mind that will totally captivate you: The Twentieth Wife and The Mountain of Light. Although Indu has two (!!) Masters degrees, she had always been inspired by her father’s storytelling – and the rest, as they say, is history.
MKT – How do your more recent novels differ from earlier novels, particularly the first few novels you wrote?
INDU SUNDARESAN: I think, with time, you understand the research structure a little better. Or rather, what exactly you need to know to get your book in order before you begin writing. Aspects of culture are a given—food, clothing, manners of speech, the organization of the community, what is acceptable in the society of that time and what not. A timeline helps, especially if you’re paying attention to keeping events in a certain chronological order and attempting to make sense of what happens in between documented history, how one event leads to another.
When I begin a novel, I’ve already done a fair amount of work on it, whether actual research where I document everything I think I might want to know, or in just pondering on the book. I start the process for a book in my head well before I put it down on paper, and this can be a few years before I write, even while I’m at work on something else.
When I get to this point, as I begin writing, I know that I will finish the book, because the groundwork has already been done. This is the advantage you gain as you write more.
I don’t plot on paper, certainly not the entire novel, but I have an idea of how it’s going to progress at the beginning. That will change as I write because a particular scene will send the novel into a different direction, albeit briefly. I would have said that I typically know the final denouement to the novel, but I’m just (on my current novel) changing the ending as I get to it.
So, while there’s no obvious layout beforehand—entire plot, character list, character sketches fixed before beginning—the practice of having written books, like any other skill, is the assurance that the book will be completed.
MKT – How has your writing process evolved since your first years as an author?
INDU – I think in two ways that seem very contradictory to each other. One, in the early years, I wrote without actually thinking about the basic constitution of the book—beginnings, middle, end. I did pay some attention to tension and creating expectation in the reader, but that came from my father telling me bedtime stories as a child and stopping each night at a high-pressure point. I would think about the story until he had time another night to continue it—this might have been my very first writing class.
After I finished two books and then my first two published novels—The Twentieth Wife and The Feast of Roses, about the most powerful woman in the Mughal dynasty that built the Taj Mahal in India—I took writing classes. It’s a route I recommend to every fledgling writer, to have a manuscript, no matter how rough and unready, before first learning editing skills. For that’s what writing classes actually do teach you and when you’ve already written a book, you have context for everything that you learn. It’s very valuable. This is when I learned to take all the raw matter and shape it into an acceptable novel.
The contradictory part came in my later novels, because having once learned to edit, you can’t really unlearn it. When I’m writing now, I am thinking ahead on plot, where do I plant clues about the protagonist’s character, in what fashion should those clues come, and where as the plot progresses.
It’s still, however, a fairly hands-off process, almost writing without thought for the first draft, and when that’s completed, sitting back to look at the book as a whole and then going into a chapter/scene/line edit.
Have you tried different eras? If so, to what effect?
In my five published historical novels (all set in India so far), I’ve written from the 16th Century until just before Indian independence from British rule in 1947. Obviously, there are differences in the very pattern of society between these time periods—earlier, there are sovereigns who dominate the policies in their own kingdoms, and in the later years (after India became a British colony) there is a foreign power that rules over the country and the experiences can be both heavy and humiliating. So, as a writer, you harness those prevailing sentiments—it informs the actions and emotions of the characters in the novel.
And then, as far as basic research goes, between an earlier time period and a later one, there are, of course, improvements in basic lifestyles with the Industrial Revolution intervening and the internal combustion engine coming into existence, along with electricity and telephones and other forms of transportation. Those are just the practicalities of life.
In essence though, characters are very similar all through the ages, what they want, need and covet, the same jealousies, the same hatreds and dislikes, all packaged within the specifics of their particular environments which you must pay attention to, because the atmosphere also instructs their behavior.
Has your readership changed over time? Do you have any insights on why your readership has or has not changed?
My general readership has grown. . .younger? I hear from new readers who are discovering my novels for the first time, typically the novels of the Taj Trilogy, The Twentieth Wife, The Feast of Roses and Shadow Princess.
There’s also quite a bit of academic interest from researchers writing articles for peer-reviewed journals on the basic themes of my novels. Their focus is on women and power in a patriarchal society, silenced voices and feminism, the imperial Mughal harem (in my Taj Trilogy) as a space not just of stereotyped sensuality but a quiet supremacy that pervaded through the Indian Mughal empire from behind the veil. (I tend to be as accurate as possible in my historical novels.)
I know of six researchers who have done their PhD dissertations on my novels and a couple of them have been in contact with me over the span of years they worked on their theses. I’ve answered a few questions here and there, typically on my writing/researching process, but I mostly just cheered them on through the long process. The analysis is theirs, and they had dissertation advisors, of course.
For more about Indu Sundaresan:
- My review of The Mountain of Light
- Indu Sundaresan on Writing Historical Fiction Set in India
- Power Behind the Veil: In the harems of India’s Mughal Empire – a fascinating look at the harems of Mughal India
Many thanks, Indu. I look forward to reading your next novel!
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M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel THAT WAS THEN is a contemporary thriller. Mary’s other novels, THE ADMIRAL’S WIFE, PARIS IN RUINS, TIME AND REGRET, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook or on her website www.mktod.com.
