Alka Joshi returns to Writers Voices with the second installment of her historical fiction trilogy – The Secret Keeper of Jaipur. She talked with us about her novels and her writing process.
” I am not a good person for routines. I’ve never been good with routines.
So for me the best thing to do is just sit with the characters and let scenes come into my imagination. As they come into my imagination, it’s almost like a movie that plays in my head; and as the movie plays in my head I start moving characters around. Like I think, ‘Hmm okay I like the fact that they are sitting in a park, but what if they were sitting inside a kitchen.’ So then in my mind I imagine a kitchen and these people are sitting in the same kitchen having the same dialogue that I heard before in my head. Once I think I have got the scene pretty well worked out in my head, that’s when I put it down in my laptop.”
” I am not a good person for routines. I’ve never been good with routines.
So for me the best thing to do is just sit with the characters and let scenes come into my imagination. As they come into my imagination, it’s almost like a movie that plays in my head; and as the movie plays in my head I start moving characters around. Like I think, ‘Hmm okay I like the fact that they are sitting in a park, but what if they were sitting inside a kitchen.’ So then in my mind I imagine a kitchen and these people are sitting in the same kitchen having the same dialogue that I heard before in my head. Once I think I have got the scene pretty well worked out in my head, that’s when I put it down in my laptop.”
I never start off with a blank page. ‘Cause I think that scares a lot of people. You know when they start off with a blank page, like. ‘ Okay, what am I gonna write on this?’. I never start off with a blank page. I always have these scenes in my head that have to come onto my laptop.
Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.
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