Advice from Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

". . . .the novel is like a tapestry. It's a long and painstaking process, and I have to work on the details and create an alternative world, and it has to, be as.full and rich as I can make it. A short story is like painting a watercolor--the challenge is to have a lightness of touch. What I'm working with is nuance and subtlety and ellipses--what I'm leaving out is important as what I'm putting in. I have to work with the power of suggestion and I love the form because of this.

What I learned from reading so many novels, is that the novel, as it goes on, has to expand. It has to give you a sense of a larger life, not just the story you're dealing with, no matter how well it's told. There must be a sense of resonance, a sense that in that story is the knowledge of a whole larger story whose presence is felt.

One of the things I tell my students at Houston is, "Stop! Don't read so much." Usually teachers are saying just the opposite, but there comes a time when you have to shut down all of the input channels, and you have to go into yourself and. write what's in there. Sometimes students in writing programs are using too much of their logical and critical brainpower and not enough of their intuition.

Be very clear about where the heart of the story is, what is most important, what's at stake. Have you managed to stay focused on that? Is that where the energy is coming from? 0r have you digressed onto other things which are easier or flashier?

from "An Interview with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni" by Sarah Anne Johnson
The Writer's Chronicle September 2002