Continuing my psychological thriller series, I'm delighted to welcome the lovely Trisha Sakhlecha to my blog. Trisha's debut Your Truth or Mine (don't you just love that title?) was published in June last year and I've been dying to find out how this thriller writer goes about the writing process. I love these interviews as every author has been so very different.
Your
Truth or Mine is your debut novel. Do you remember where you were and what you
were doing when the idea for your thriller came to you?
I wish I did, but it doesn’t usually work like that
for me. There’s very rarely a single moment of inspiration, it’s more like a
slow building and layering of lots of ideas and themes. With Your Truth or Mine?, my starting point
was a single image: a happily married woman discovering that her ‘perfect’
husband had been having an affair. The characters had been living in my head
for a while at that point and I knew early on that I wanted to write about the
shock of infidelity in a marriage in which one partner’s version of the truth
completely contradicts the other’s and the subtle, and often crippling, forms
of emotional and psychological control that can go unnoticed, all of which is
brought into sharp focus as the protagonists find themselves enmeshed in an
investigation.
Could
you describe your novel in a sentence?
When a young woman goes missing, an expat couple are
forced to confront uncomfortable truths about their relationship and all the
lies and secrets it conceals.
Have
you always wanted to write in the psychological thriller genre?
When I started writing Your Truth or Mine? I had no idea what genre it would fit into. All
I knew back then was that I was writing a novel about a toxic, dysfunctional
marriage that had layers of lies and deceits woven through it. It was only once
I finished the first draft that I realised that what I had in my hands had the
potential to be a psychological thriller. But looking at it in hindsight and
considering how dark and twisted I like my plots, I can’t imagine writing
anything other than psychological thrillers!
Are
you a plotter or a pantster and how long did it take you to write your
thriller?
I think I’m a bit of both. I usually have the main
beats mapped out – the big reveals and twists -
and I do a very vague outline, but other than that, I like to discover
the story as I work through the first draft. If my characters don’t surprise
me, I doubt they’ll be able to surprise my readers. I NEVER know the ending
until I’ve written it. The first draft usually takes me between five to six
months, then there’s a couple of months of edits.
What
did you find hardest and what easiest when writing Your Truth or Mine?
Your Truth or Mine? isn’t just my first published
novel, it was my first attempt at writing fiction, so I think the hardest part
was getting to grips with the rules and the conformations of writing fiction –
I’d never even considered things like the three act structure or pacing and
tension before. It was a very steep learning curve.
The easiest part, ironically, was writing the actual
first draft - knowing so little about the craft meant I had complete freedom to
make so many really, really obvious mistakes and just have fun with the
process.
Can
you describe what you were doing and your emotions when you heard Your Truth or
Mine had found a publisher?
I was shopping at IKEA with my Mum when the very first
offer came through. I was pushing a trolley stacked with flat pack furniture
when I heard my phone ping. There had been a lot of back and forth with
publishers that week and I knew even before I’d looked at my phone that it was
my agent. Typically, my signal dropped out before the email could finish
loading, so all I could see was the subject line with the word ‘Offer’ in it. I
remember abandoning my shopping trolley - and my very bewildered mother - in
one of those massive aisles and running around IKEA like a mad woman trying to
find cell signal!
Have
you always wanted to be a writer?
Yes! Though it wasn’t until I showed the finished
first draft of Your Truth or Mine? to
a few writer friends that I dared to dream about being a published writer.
Could
you describe your typical writing day?
When I’m writing the first draft, my writing day begins
at 5am. I tend to go straight to the draft and write for a solid hour or so,
before going back to sleep. I find that writing that early in the morning when
I’m not even fully awake lets me tap into my subconscious and write more freely
– and quickly - than I do later on in the day. It helps that I’m really just
desperate to go back to bed but I do usually manage to get the bare bones of
the scene or chapter I’m working on down in that time. I go back to my desk
around 9.30-10am and spend a few hours reworking whatever I wrote in the
morning, building in the layers, adding description, refining the dialogue etc.
I usually finish by 2pm.
When I’m editing though, I find afternoons better and
I’ll usually start around midday and work until late into the night.
What
next for Trisha Sakhlecha?
I’m waiting on line edits for my second psychological
thriller, Can You See Me Now? which
is due to be published later this year and working on the first draft of book 3.
Trisha
Sakhlecha grew up in New Delhi and now lives in London. She works in fashion
and is a graduate of the acclaimed Faber Academy writing course. In the past,
Trisha has worked as a designer, trend forecaster, and lecturer. Your Truth or Mine? is her first novel.
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