The moment you write the first line of your book, you (will have) imparted half your strength to it,,” says acclaimed Hindi writer Krishna Sobti. “Once this first sentence has been penned, the writer in me knows that this sentence has to be nurtured… You know you have to take care of this sentence. And the other sentences that will follow.” Indeed, Sobti is an instinctive writer—she does not plot out her stories in advance but allows them to evolve on the strength of this first sentence.

Dressed in her trademark gharara, her head covered with a blue dupatta, Sobti, now 92, sits comfortably on her favourite chair in the living room of her fifth floor apartment in east Delhi. “I always make three drafts for all my books. The third time over, I like to read the story out aloud. If anything has to be changed, I will change it then. Once the manuscript is off my table, I never look at it again,” says the writer who won the Sahitya Akademi award for Zindaginama, her book set in rural Punjab that looks at critical social issues of the time. Read more

Source: The Hindu