"I do my fiction writing in the summer holidays or in the winter break. It’s too hard to write a novel if you have to stop every two days, which is what happens when you try and do it when you are teaching. I need to get into a rhythm. When you write at a stretch, that’s when things start opening up, otherwise you are writing on the surface," he says.

I smile at the mention of ‘surface’ - it’s also the name of Deb’s very immersive first novel which is set in the Northeast. His latest book, The Light at the End of the World is trippy and explosively angry, vaulting over spaces and times, moving from the National Register of Citizens to the Bhopal gas tragedy. The writing is brilliant, evocative, and so surreal in its unrelenting intensity, it makes me uncomfortable.

Deb is an alumnus of Columbia University, which has been in the news for banning pro-Palestinian student groups. We talk briefly about the illiberalness of places that are positioned as the liberal bastion of the West. On his Instagram stories, Deb has been protesting the massacre of Palestinian civilians.

But he needs to disconnect from social media when he writes, he says. Thus inspired, I decided to put away my phone and head to the public library instead.

Early the next morning, I pick out gel pens in three colours, a writing journal and my laptop, and walk to the public library.

But hold on a minute! Now that I am in a library, maybe I should check out a few books on novel writing. Just as a start?

Reader, that, as you might guess, was the beginning of the end. A languidly literary end, I might add, spending five hours gleaning gloriously written guidelines from how to write books, solving everything from story structure, character, conflict, settings and related problems of the novelistic life.

"The structure... You find it as you go along. Chapter by chapter. Voice by voice... tell the story in one fell swoop, or if it should be divided into sections, or if it should have multiple voices," says the Irish writer Colum McCann in his lyrical Letters to a Young Writer.

"As you build out a character’s years prior to the story’s inciting incident, focus on early adolescence... If he’s lucky, he’ll have a positive experience—an inspirational teacher, a personal epiphany. Or his first glimpse of a life purpose may turn sharply negative," says Robert McKee in his classic book Character.

Returning with a whole new reading list, I think back to a book launch in Bombay, where author Rashmi Bansal was asked for writing advice. She was matter-of-factly firm: “Set yourself a deadline. Don’t chase perfection. Just write.”

And once you have written your novel, how do you pitch it?

I emailed literary agent Kanishka Gupta, famed for his acumen at spotting authors who go on to win major literary prizes. He represents Sahitya Academy award-winning Anees Salim and Booker prize winners like Daisy Rockwell and Shehan Karunatilaka (in South Asia for some of his works).

Kanishka is just back from a literary festival at Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh, he is rattled by the roads, in awe of the music and remarkably patient with my rookie queries. Here are edited excerpts of our conversation:

What does your job as a literary agent entail?

I am the first reader, editor, lawyer, accountant, strategist, publicist, sounding board, and punching bag all rolled into one. My work includes organising blurbs and actively pitching my author's works to OTT and audiobook publishers.

Your literary agency, Writers Side, represents an amazing roster of South Asian authors. How did that happen?

Initially, I had to rely almost entirely on the unsolicited slush pile since established writers and even first-time writers with some social caches were very reluctant to sign up with me. I've built my reputation by signing up first-time writers and offering free advice to well-connected writers who didn’t want to sign up with me. In the last five years or so, I’ve discovered good writers mostly through recommendations from happy authors or journalists and festival organisers.

I absolutely hate to lose authors to rival agents or otherwise. This means I get very little time for pleasure, leisure, or for that matter, leisure reading because I have too much on my plate all the time.

When you receive a submission, how important is the cover letter?

For me, a badly written query letter is a big red flag. In such instances, I don’t even read the proposal or chapters from the proposed work. I am a sucker for innovatively done query letters. At the same time, I find many promising writers go overboard in their attempts to impress agents, and that’s rather off-putting.

Can you give us an example of a cover letter you liked?

Here’s one:

Dear Mr. Gupta,

My name is Nadia Akbar and I am a Pakistani-American fiction writer seeking representation. I have just completed my first novel, Goodbye Freddie Mercury, which is set in modern-day Lahore, Pakistan. I am excited by the prospect of being represented by you, and the Writer's Side Agency, because of your proven commitment in representing the best South Asian writers in a global community. I feel strongly that my unique, rebellious, and modern Pakistani characters will appeal to you, Indian readers, and a wide international audience.

Goodbye Freddie Mercury

Famous rock radio personality Bugsy is disillusioned with the limits of Pakistani fame, the prestige of his connected military family, and the indulgence of his rich and powerful friends. Nida, a provocative Lahore University student, is purposely smashing all the boundaries of her restricted Islamic working-class life. Both paths romantically cross during an intrigue-filled election summer, as Nida spirals further upward in a stomach-churning trajectory of decadence, and Bugsy descends into the darkened political caverns of a corrupt election process that will ultimately change both their lives forever.

Part political, part romance, and part rock ‘n' roll subculture novel, Goodbye Freddie Mercury is a unique work that intersects Hanif Kureishi's Buddha of Suburbia, Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, and Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero. At 109,340 words and 364 pages, it is a novel that will appeal to adult readers of both literary and cult/popular fiction; in both English-speaking countries such as England, Canada, and the United States, as well as India and Pakistan. Goodbye Freddie Mercury is narrated from the point-of-view of Bugsy and Nida, in two parallel first-person present-tense narratives that chart their lives over the course of one election summer.

About Nadia Akbar

I was born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan. I hold degrees from Cornell University and the graduate creative writing program at the University of Arizona.

In this e-mail, I have included a synopsis and attached as a Word file the first three chapters of Goodbye Freddie Mercury.

Thank you for your consideration. I appreciate your interest and support,

Nadia Akbar

Your novel ‘History of Hate’ was on the longlist for the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize. But before that happened, you faced rejection as an author?

I was 21 when I wrote my first novel. It was a terribly written historical fiction called Farcical Fates. Khushwant Singh said he found it verbose, and an editor at Penguin India who read the book, called it 'unpublishable'. After that, I wrote/half-wrote and abandoned several novels including 'Despair', 'Dogma', 'Error', 'The Life of God', 'In Anima' etc!

How do you respond to submissions you don’t like?

I don't like to send out stock rejections. If we are not interested in a submission, we simply don't respond. We explicitly mention this on our website. I feel stock rejections are worse than silent rejections because there is a ring of insincerity and dishonesty to them.

However, if we have seen promise in a proposal shared by an author and asked for the full manuscript, then we always get back to the author with detailed feedback on why the book didn’t work for us or live up to the expectations set up by the initial chapters.

And finally, what is your advice to aspiring writers?

Be very realistic about your intrinsic strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Creative writing courses and workshops can teach you craft and inculcate writing discipline. It can’t teach you brilliance and originality. You either have it or you don’t.

Ask yourself why you want to write a book. What is so special and unique about your story that strangers would want to spend money on buying it? Has it never been told before? Even if it has, is your telling of it new?

…

With this writing advice, it’s a wrap for now. Next week, as we head into December, we look back at the year's reading, distilling the best for your 2024 reading list.

Until then, happy writing and happy reading!

Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com

The views expressed are personal

Books mentioned in this edition of Book Box

Surface by Siddhartha Deb

The Light at the End of the World by Siddhartha Deb

Letters to a Young Writer by Column McCann

Character by Robert McKee

Further Reading for Novelists

Write for Life by Julia Cameron: The darling of writing workshops, this book is gold! It's packed with brilliant advice. Cameron puts down practices and routines to unblock the writer in you, nourish your creativity and deal with writer's roadblocks like fear and jealousy.

The Fiction Writers Guide to Dialogue by John Hough: Avoid the quirks, tics and habits of real-life speech says Hough, in a practical primer that is packed with examples of effective literary dialogue.

Visions and Revisions: The poet’s process by Barry Wallenstein and Robert Burr - What a treat to study the successive drafts of famous poets like Plath and Wilfred Owen, to see how they move one word here, delete another there, flip a sentence, and how these revisions to a first draft totally transform writing.

The Secret Miracle: The Novelists Handbook edited by Daniel Alarcon, the kind of book you can fall into, where the world's writers talk about their writing - everything from how polished they try to make the first draft, to what they look for in a novel.

Fire Up Your Writing Brain by Susan Reynolds

On Writing by Stephen King

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Solutions for Writers by Sol Stein