Vibha Batra on her latest book, Spotless, a novel in verse

Vibha Batra’s latest book, Spotless (Hachette India) is a novel in verse for young adults

Vibha Batra’s latest book, Spotless (Hachette India), a novel in verse for young adults, began its journey in a very different form. “A couple of years ago, I was bouncing a couple of ideas off my illustrator, and I shared this story with her. She told me it would work well as a graphic novel,” recalls the Chennai-based advertising consultant and writer, the author of over 30 books in multiple genres.

So, Vibha began approaching the story with that form in mind, and then hit a sudden hurdle: “My illustrator retired, and left me holding the baby, so to speak,” she recalls.

Knowing that she really wanted to write this book, she began working on it, discovering, much to her surprise, that the story spilt out in verse. “It was bizarre, because I have never written a novel in verse before,” says Vibha, a self-confessed “total poetry nerd” who found herself “bingeing on verse novels to write this one: Love That Dog by Sharon Creech, The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, Jason Reynolds Long Way Down, and anything Sarah Crossan writes.”

While she did face her fair share of detractors as she embarked on Spotless — people who would tell her that young adults don’t read anyway and that a novel in verse could be perceived as scary by them — she steadily plodded away.

“It all came out in a gush,” says Vibha, admitting, however, that the editing process was intense. “We pulled all-nighters, worked on weekends, and through illnesses. The entire book was rewritten while we were editing it,” she says of the book, which came out last September.

The book cover | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement