Show a manuscript to my wife. Write a book with an audience in mind. Use a computer or typewriter to write
Show a manuscript to my wife. Write a book with an audience in mind. Use a computer or typewriter to write
"I'm in agony right now," he says, after we are done with hellos. Dressed in a comfortable bubblegum pink T-shirt, beige pants and a broad grin, English author Jeffrey Archer hardly looks like he is in pain. But he is.
He has sent the first of his next series-of-five, The Cliffton Chronicles, to his editor. "I sent it on Friday and I'll know what they think when I get back. This waiting period, it's agony," he repeats.
Archer is on his fifth trip to India, this time to launch his new short story collection, And Thereby Hangs A Tale.
"You get it before anyone else," he says about the India-first launch, settling down at a five-star coffee shop.
They are late, they are still putting up the books," says Archer, with a mock-accusing look at the staff.
In his last interview with this newspaper, Archer had mentioned how he wouldn't be able to write a story set in India. Cast-Off, one of the pieces in Thereby Hangs A Tale is an India love story.
"I was asked to write a book about the Tatas but I couldn't possibly do that. But this story I heard of quite by chance. It's based on true events and it has this amazing twist," he says.
He could have set the story in England, he shrugs, but the story wouldn't have worked then.
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Archer shows us the asterix marked next to the title, which indicates it's based on a true story. "I had to mention that because the twist is such, no author could have ever invented it," he says.
Archer deliberately chose to put it as the last in the collection, because he wanted readers to gasp when they reached the end of the book.
"It's a Bollywood movie plot," he adds as an afterthought, recalling how caste issues were dealt with in Lagaan as well. "The best bowler on the team was an untouchable," he remembers.
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Write for no one
Despite holding the tag of bestselling novelist for over three decades, Archer maintains that he doesn't write for an audience.
"I simply write what I want to write, and pray that readers like it." He offers it as advice for upcoming writers.
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If he wanted to cash in on what's selling, he'd take a leaf out of the Twilight series and attempt his own vampire novel. "But I can't do that, it's not my thing, so I won't," he says. Has he read the novels? "Nope, not my thing."
Archer would rather talk of his new book; he's just wrapped up the eighth draft. He's now on a five-week break from writing. "When I get back, I'll start work on the ninth."
The Clifton Chronicles talk of the life of Harry Clifton between 1920 to 2020.
True to what he says about never showing a manuscript to the spouse, Archer has passed on the draft to an old acquaintance in Bristol, a Mr Watts.
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"I hadn't met him in 30 years, but since my story is based in Bristol, I thought he'd be able to tell me whether it works."
He is an impatient writer, he admits, and he only gets through all his writing because he's disciplined. "Writing isn't fun. It isn't easy, whether you are writing a short story or a novel.
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What's fun is when you hand it in, all done," he explains, trailing off about how the younger generation is way too impatient.
The re-writer of his own classic tale of sibling rivalry, Kane & Abel, when it completed 30 years in print, says. "I wanted it to last the next 30 years, even after I was gone. But maybe I won't be, ha!" he laughs.
While Archer's novels range from the humongous As The Crow Flies to the little collection of short stories, Cat'O Nine Tales, his style remains the same: long hand.
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"When I type and the words appear on screen, I feel as if they are not mine. When I put pen on paper, I'm forming the letters and the words. They are all mine."
Published by: Pan Macmillan
Available for Rs 253 at all leading bookstores
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| Favourite bookstore Hatchards in Piccadilly, London. Last book read Ian McEwan's Solar. My wife got a lot from the book, because she's a solar power expert; me not so much. The thing with Ian McEwan is, he is a brilliant writer, he can play wonderfully with words. Earliest books read The entire William series by Richmal Crompton. When I'm in India I always meet Madhu, a merchandising officer with Landmark. I take him by the throat and he rattles off a list of books by authors I've mostly never heard of. He's a brilliant man, he's got a huuuge brain, and he's smarter than (pointing to Landmark staff) all you guys. |
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