How Ruchita Misra Wrote Her Delectable New Novel, ‘Her One True Love’

When Ikadashi Kumar and Fredrick Heisenberg meet in London, the pull is immediate and electric. She enjoys dancing in the rain and has worked her way up the corporate ladder. He is curt, focused and one the most desirable men in the UK.

Despite Ika and Fredrick’s best attempts to thwart them, powerful forces draw the two together

threatening to turn their worlds to ashes, for Fredrick is engaged to a popular American celebrity and Ika is a wife and mother.

Will they be able to fight destiny and their own fears? Will Ika finally give in and follow her heart? Will Fredrick find the answers to unlock secrets from his past? Her One True Love is a story of betrayal, redemption, second chances and, above all, of the incredible power of love in all its forms.

In an exclusive piece for HarperBroadcast, Ruchita Misra shares the journey of writing the novel, her love for her characters and words, and more! Read:

Five books in and it still feels surreal every time a book is set for release.

I also feels a bit rusty — given the five-year gap between the release of this book and the previous one. Thoughts of all shapes and sounds are jiggling around in my head which is a very noisy place to start with. One minute I am sure I have written the best book in the history of books and then the next moment I’m sure it is a pile of rubbish and then I think I must be a bit mad.

The main plot of Her One True Love finds its genesis in a girl I used to work with many years ago when I was new to London. Whilst her Fredrick wasn’t exactly the most eligible bachelor in UK; he was nosy and given to impossible amounts of whinging but to her he was magnificient. They got along so well that seeing them always made me wonder — what if? HOTL is an ode to what could have happened to their story. Maybe I should text her and find out if anything did IRL?

The second plot line came to me from a question I was asked at the book launch of my fourth book, ‘Someone To Love’.

Why was it, asked a reader, that I always write about young people finding romance? Did not older people deserve a chance at finding love too?

Touche, Monsieur. Who ever you maybe, here we go. I have right-ed my wrongs. Love can and should come to us whenever the time is right, whether it is when we are twenty or when we are seventy-five. 

My writing process — much like me sadly — can be very whimsical. It varies from excel sheets plus notes running into hundreds of pages to just going for it and letting the characters speak. Her One True Love for example needed a staggering 120 pages of notes — which is almost half the size of the actual book. Not to forget 21 tabs on an excel sheet very intelligently called ‘Excel sheet’. I may or may not say it but I live life in perpetual bedazzlement of my intelligence.

A lot of people have already asked me about my five-year sabbatical. Here is the deal — shock, horror — there was no sabbatical. I have written non-stop, pretty much every day for these 5 years — give me a medal for dogged determination, now. The book started with one story, then I added another story line to it and then a third and then realised the book was 130k words. In publishing this is just too big. Then began the process of cutting it to a more desirable size which resulted in a smaller but also (to me at least) horribly written book.

That was when I took the suggestion of those around me and took my only one month break from writing.  Got back, scrapped most bits, sat down and truly thought about what I wanted to say and came out of that 8-month process with what is now Her One True Love. As it now reads, HOTL is true to my vision of the book and also my style of writing — a bit light and hopefully a bit wise.  

Getting HOTL here has been a journey both longer than I had expected and with far more ups and downs than I wanted. However, like with all such arduous journeys, this one also comes with its share of lessons.  And here is my biggest learning: always, and always dream big. If you don’t dream big for yourself, no one else will.

The other learning is beautifully contradictory. It is that although you don’t know it, sometimes your plan isn’t the best one and it maybe a good idea to, at times, surrender to the universe, to flow downstream and to let things figure themselves out.

The art, or the wisdom, lies in knowing when to keep pushing and when to stop trying.

My style of writing is also a bit different from most authors because of how time-pressed my life is — I am usually up at 5 am to work.  I have two little boys who are ready to burn the world down at short notice, I have a full time demanding job that often keeps me awake at night and I live in London where, let’s just say, I don’t have ten people helping me with the house. You know how some authors wear fancy flowing dresses to go on writing retreats and need the air conditioner at exactly 21 degrees to be able to write? I write in snatched snippets — sitting by the pool during a kids swimming class, huddled on the pitch waiting for my son to finish his football game or in the tube.  I once even found myself furiously writing sitting on a bench in Oxford Street in London, even as thousands of tourists milled past. But there I was, oblivious to the world, lost in my words.

Maybe, I sometimes think, that is what passion is?

Fun trivia: I’ve written two entire books in the tube, including the first draft of this book.

Wrapping up HOTL and finding its home with HarperCollins feels like the end of a big chapter in my life and to be able to write ‘THE END’ to the final edit felt emotional for good reason.

I created Ika and Fredrick and have loved them for 5 long years. In some creepy-creative way they feel real to me. So far Ika and Fredrick have belonged to me — but on 18th December that will change. They will become as much yours as they have been mine.

I hope they will make you smile, that their story will move you and that some bits of them will linger with you in your heart long after you have finished the book. 

After half a decade with them, my heart constricts a little bit every time I think of them going away into the world.

Do me a favour please?

Be kind to them?

And while you read Her One True Love, *lowers voice to a whisper* I’ll go say hello to a ghost who may be headed your way soon…