She took the students through her writing process from the beginning. She talked about how her life and heritage have always inspired her writing. Her first book, The Night Diary, is about an Indian girl, due to her Indian family on her father's side. Her newest book is about a young Jewish-American girl, which was inspired by her mother's side of the family. She also discussed making decisions like what verb tense to use and what point of view might work best. Her newest book is in the rare 2nd person point of view, which presented some challenges.
Her next step in her writing process is to think of all the "ingredients" that will help form her characters and story. For example, her main character's family will own a bakery, because she loves to write about food. Because this is an historical fiction book, she has to think about the history that is taking place. Two characters will be getting married, and since one is Indian and one is Jewish, it is an interracial marriage. This book takes place in 1968, right after the Supreme Court Loving decision, so how does that affect her story? What other big events of 1968 would be important to her story?
We thank Veera for sharing her writing expertise with us and hope she had a happy book birthday!