Lately, I’ve added meditation back into my writing routine.

Wait. Before you click to the next thing, hear me out. Meditation doesn’t have to be strange or alternative or hippie. It’s just a tool, a way to discipline your mind.

Writing fiction is a mysterious process. We all know this. We might not be comfortable with it, but we know it.

I mean, really…where do ideas come from? People ask me this all the time. Why did I decide to write a book about England, about a woman who has to unravel her mother’s secrets, about the connection between a British family and and Indian family?

Readers want to hear that you have a plan, so I’ll come up with some explanation. My partner is British, and there’s this strange family secret I’ll never unravel, and I like the BBC shows about old manor houses and castles being saved.

But where did these particular people come from? Why that secret? Why did the grandmother show up in this way, not that way?

I dunno. [Read more…]