A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.
An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.
Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.
It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.
I am sure of this: that no one can write a book which children will like unless he write it for himself first.
I gave up writing children's books. I wanted to escape from them as I had once wanted to escape from 'Punch': as I have always wanted to escape. In vain.
It has always been very difficult for writers to survive commercially in India because the market was so small. But that's not true at all any more. It's one of the world's fastest growing and most vibrant markets for books, especially in English.
Too much of Indian writing in English, it seemed to me, consisted of middle-class people writing about other middle-class people - and a small slice of life being passed off as an authentic portrait of the country.
For years, I sort of would try to write a story that somehow fit the title. And I don't think it happened for maybe another four years that I actually thought of a story, the plot of a story that corresponded to that phrase.
I dream of writing a book like LOVERS some day. It is so spare but so rich. It is history made intimate, and a masterpiece of compression.
It took me a long time to even dare to envision myself as a writer. I was very uncertain and hesitant and afraid to pursue a creative life.
My responsibility isn't to paint a flattering portrait; my responsibility is to paint a real portrait, a true portrait.
Sometimes, so much of the difficulty is the question of 'What am I going to write about?' because the world is so vast.
Connect with
Login with Facebook