Creme Magazine, March 2017.

ART & CULTURE
Sujata Sabnis started her career as a journalist
in Pune. Working with a leading news daily, Sujata
established herself as a bankable journalist. As a
journalist, Sujata discovered her talent for writing
mysterious and murderous stories and her ability to
create a gripping, pacy copy. But writing an article for
a newspaper with a limited word count was a far cry
away from penning a novel. Slowly but surely, she let
the story idea over power her and took the plunge into
pursuing a career as an author. She pursued the story
for over a year and got her first book ‘Silent whispers’
published. Subsequently, her love for words and stories
led her to publish another thriller under the title ‘A twist
in destiny’, making her a revered writer in the particular
genre. However, her third novel ‘Songs of Stone’ set up
in the Mughal period was a refreshing surprise to her
fans and all those who know her. “I have always been a
history buff and have found Mughal period fascinating.
But I can’t claim that I chose this topic , it would only be
fair to say that the story chose me. It came to me via this
wonderful story that struck me one day. I was petrified
at the idea of writing a love story and doubted my ability
to do justice to it. But once I started writing something
took over, it could be the characters themselves and I
managed to churn out a beautiful story.”
Her passion for words and stories are evident
through her books and she maintains that writing
a novel is heady. “Think about it you are creating
a world from your own imagination complete with
characters, events, twists. It’s a world in which your
reader will live while he is reading your novel. That is
powerful stuff, a feeling like no other. You fall in love
with your own characters, they occupy a delightful dark
corner of your mind, you laugh and cry with them, you
live vicariously through them.”
For her, the eureka moment that brings thrilling
moment when she is struck by a wonderful plot will
always be exhilarating and memorable but after the
initial high has worn off, the actually slog of developing
the story, characters and plot points set in. “A dauting
part in writing a novel is teaching yourself the discipline
needed to write itif you wait for inspiration to strike,
you may never finish the book. I adopted a rule that I
will write 1000 words a day, five days a week, even if
I later scrap most of it. I also learnt how to cope with
genuine writers’ block, how not to panic in such times
and have faith in the creative process that at some point
words will start flowing again. ”
MARCH 2017 59