'I write eight hours a day...'

Becoming a Story Teller 💛

Do You Want To Be A Storyteller? 🎶

19th November 2020

Catching up with the legendary Jeffrey Archer LIVE... 🎶

7:45 pm - 8:45 pm 💛

Jeffrey Archer speaks out his heart...

I believe writing is no different from singing in an opera or playing on the violin.

If you’re educated, you can be a good writer.

But being a story teller is something different.

For me, I wanted to be a politician.

Only 29 years old, I found myself sitting in the House of Commons, as a Member of Parliament.

Looking back, I thought I was too young to enter the House of Commons. I had five years in the House of Commons.

Everything went on fine, until I made a foolish investment.

I stupidly borrowed money, and ended up with debts of 400,000 pounds, 45 years ago, a lot of money.

I was out of job, unemployable.

Facing bankruptcy, but glad to say, I never went bankrupt.

Then I wrote my first book – Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less!

Sixteen publishers turned down my first book.

The 17th publisher did only 3000 copies.

Then they went into paperback and made several thousand copies.

The real breakthrough came when I wrote Cain and Abel, which sold a million copies, and it changed my fortune thereafter.

Now I’ve written 33 books, and I’m still going strong, because I love it.

After Cain and Abel, I wrote three more books, when Thatcher called me back to politics.

People ask if I regret keeping away from writing!

But I tell you, they were amazing experiences for me!

After John Major, I involved full time in writing.

Now let me brief you on my Process of Writing

I rise at 5.30 am in the morning and start writing at 6 am.

I do work from 6 to 8 am!

Then I take a two hour break, to read the morning newspapers and have my breakfast.

Then from 10 to 12 I write.

10,000 paces I walk before lunch.

After lunch I work from 2 to 4 pm.

Take another break, and return for the final session that goes between 6 and 8 pm.

So I write eight hours a day.

The first draft takes 40 to 45 days.

That’s been a regular routine with me for the past fifteen years.

That all of course changed because of COVID 19.

I also want to tell you, how I write.

I write with a felt tip pen.

I can’t use any kind of machinery.

I hand write every single word, and then it is sent to my secretary Allison who types it out triple space, and then I hand write it with my pencil on that script.

And possibly by the end, 14 drafts, all hand written, I would think that would be 20 percent larger than the original book that I wrote in the first 45 days.

One gets the story done in the first fifty days.

The rest 150 days, you develop it and hone it to perfection.

After 50 years, you gain experience that you don’t commit that much mistakes.

These strange situations of COVID 19 and lockdown, my wife and I were locked down for a 146 days in our home in Cambridge, which is where i’m sitting now.

So I had to break my routine for the first time.

So I had to make use of the time constructively.

I felt that the discipline must be maintained.

I did 6 to 8 writing.

Then from 10 to 12

Then I made the change!

Having gone for my walk, and having had my lunch, I didn’t start until 3 pm

So from 3 to 5 I wrote again.

And hence instead of eight hours a day, I wrote six hours a day.

In that time of 145 days, I did six hours.

I did 900 hours of writing – I wrote an entire book in that period.

Then I had a month’s break – I went back – took the final draft.

So instead of doing a book in a year – but in six months.

In the publishing, the printing process is not a quick one.

But before finishing with one book, I never think about the next book.

I’m 80 years now, to remind you, and I love writing, and feel it’s a privilege, which I won’t be stopping, because I feel I’m not old enough to stop writing!

I like a particular print that is easy to read!

I see the cover! And indeed, if I don’t like the cover, I ask them to change it.

People ask me, ‘Are you excited about writing the same way, you were, fifty years ago?’

I reply, ‘Well, yes! I am as excited even now, and I will continue to be so, till my last full stop!’

I had 92 short stories made up of six volumes!

I wanted to captain the English cricket team! I also wanted to be Prime Minister.

But it’s been a much greater privilege to be a writer.

What a great privilege!

Thank you for listening to me speak on my career, my passion, my life!

The best questions I’ve had from India are from children! Aged 11, 12, 13, 14 and listen to what they’ve to say about writing!

Thank you very much! 🎶

Now Q & A is in progress… 💛

'There’s a lot of woman in me! Cassandra especially!'

Living A Little, Meaning A Lot 💛

Wednesday, 18th Nov 2020

5:15 pm - 6:15 pm IST

Howard Jacobson in conversation with Karthika VK. 🎊 [Snippets]

Howard says,

I’ve taught Donne and Hardy – and I’ve also lived in the county where Hardy lived!

My second novel, Peeping Tom is about Thomas Hardy – a reincarnation of Hardy!

Hardy’s poems suited my melancholic nature. I was full of regret even when I had no reason to regret!

Karthika asks,

There’s a lot of ‘Bronte touch’ in your work!

Older women, younger women, etc, not something that many male writers have ventured into!

Have we come into the realm of the end of true ‘literary’ fiction? Do you see less and less challenging writing?

Howard says,

I don’t like the turn of the literary world today.

Publishers today are more interested in diversity. I welcome that.

So publishers are on the lookout for diversity as a literary value, in the publishing world, not to cause offence!

But I feel, if you don’t want to cause offence, you shouldn’t approach writers at all.

Publishers are running scared, frightened about what writers are wanting to say!

And yes! There’s a lot of woman in me! Cassandra especially,

says Howard Jacobson before signing off! 🎶💛☺️

'I should first identify what makes me happy! – if I relate with that, that makes me successful!'

Sudha Murty LIVE… 🎶

Grandparents’ Bag of Stories: An Inheritance of Tales

Wednesday, 18th November 2020

Award-winning author Sudha Murty delights young audiences with her new collection of tales, ‘Grandparents’ Bag of Stories’ talking with Naima Ramakrishnan. 🎊☺

Grandparents’ Bag of Stories 📖

Sudha Murty 💛

Sudha Murty LIVE in conversation with Naina Ramakrishnan!

From TATA Lit FEST LIVE…

10.30 am to 11 am

Naina asks,

Why are grandma stories the best?

Sudha Murty replies,

Because, firstly, parents are quite young, and with a lot of responsibilities! So they are busy as well! Whereas grandmas are old, carry experience and have so much of love for their grand kids without any responsibility now! (since all the responsibility of raising the kids rests on the parents!) So they devote a lot of time to their grand kids! And tell them the best stories.

Naina asks,

What’s your experience with your own grandma?

Sudha Murty replies,

My grandmother was alive until I was 25! And she was a doting grandma who used to tell me stories! I’ve also named my granddaughter after my grandmother! – Krishna!

Added, I’ve also written an entire chapter after her – that’s a true story titled, ‘How I taught my grandmother to read!’

Naina asks,

How do I start writing stories?

Sudha Murty replies,

You should understand that, too much exaggeration is not good. Readers don’t like it. Be natural. Be spontaneous. Whenever you tell stories, be honest, because honesty is always appreciated.

Naina asks, 

How do you balance writing work with family?

Sudha Murty replies,

I don’t waste my time. I am very particular about my time.

How to use time very effectively.

Naina asks,

I feel there’s a lot of you in your work. What do you have to say of that?

Sudha Murty replies,

Well yes! There’s a lot of ‘me’ in my work, simply because, it’s my experience – entirely mine – and also because, so that nobody can question it – because it’s my experience! Added, they can also relate with my experiences!

Naina asks,

What is your definition of happiness?

Sudha Murty replies,

I should first identify what makes me happy – if I relate with that, that makes me successful!

For me, personally, success is about helping others and being happy with that.

That’s my definition of a contented life as well!

Sudha Murty signed off with the line,

“Success or failure may come and go! They’re immaterial!”

“But to be a good human being is the best of all!” 💛

'Poker helps strategic decision-making in real life!'

Beating the Odds of Life 💛

17 November 2020

TATA Lit Fest LIVE…

Young American – Russian author Maria Konnikova of Mastermind fame, in conversation with Girish Shahane...

Maria Konnikova says,

Poker helps strategic decision-making in real life!

Our goal is to figure out how to make the best decision possible!

As a psychologist I said to myself, how a magician confesses, how poker helps in decision-making!

Then I really wanted to learn poker, and wanted someone to teach me poker, because I saw it as a metaphor for life!

Girish asks,

In Monte Carlo, you stood on the floor of the Monte Carlo Casino explaining the idea for your new book.

You had said that you were hoping to “work from zero to the highest levels” and use the skills she had learnt to make “better decisions” in everyday life!

Maria elaborates on that.

Girish asks,

Poker was called a man’s game, and you are an exception! How is it, that a novice like yourself, managed to convince Erik Seidel to mentor you on Poker?

Maria replies,

Very good players who are playing now, started may be ten years ago!

He was the only player who had subscribed to the New Yorker, and I was a journalist. So when I approached him, he said he knew all about me from the New Yorker.

So I really did a lot of research, and I also came prepared with psychology studies, and how poker made its way into popular literature!

So I tried to prove what I could bring into the relationship too!

So first of all, when he saw an opportunity to bring the love of poker outside the poker community – I was a journalist – who wanted to write about it – so he also loved to spread the word about poker to everyone else through this media!

Poker is a game of numbers, statistics, people with a heavy mathematical background, especially people with PhD from MITs!

I think he saw in me a chance to prove a concept! Can someone be thought to think well by playing well!

That would be a huge win for him, and his philosophy.

So he said, ‘This might be interesting, and let’s see how it goes’.

That’s how it worked out, and it got around really well.

Erik taught me much more than a typical poker player.

Winning makes such a difference! To win a tournament you have to play well, but you also have to get lucky. Cos people don’t care about the second place.

I played well, but I also made some mistakes. But it’s important to convince yourself that you can give your best! 💛

'What ifs' have abundant scope of creativity to them!

Inauguration of Tata Literature Live! 2020

Monday, 16th Nov 2020

6:00 pm - 7:30 pm IST

The Enduring Power of Words

Ian McEwan LIVE in conversation with Anil Dharker

Anil Dharker asks,

Anyone reading your 2005 novel Saturday, set in London, will be surprised with your descriptive details on the protagonist, Henry Perowne, a 48-year-old neurosurgeon, where you’ve given some intimate, graphic details.

You seem to have spent quite a lot of time on that.

How long did you spend on that?

Ian McEwan replies,

I do some deep research for a novel.

Well, I spent almost two years on that.

More time especially on the operation theatre.

I became very good friends with the neurosurgeon.

At sometimes I really worked hard.

Sometimes, I have to be there in the morning, because he will be in his rounds, attending his meetings – his wife is a cancer nurse, and so he lived such a crowded life! He was almost on his feet every moment.

I had a great admiration for his team of surgeons, nurses, etc.

Anil Dharker asks,

What’s your writing schedule –

Ian McEwan replies,

Some days will be good mornings some bad! Some days a few sentences will be driving you crazy.

Anil Dharker asks -  

When you have a bad day of writing – how do you soldier on?

Ian McEwan replies,

I keep going.

I have pretty strict rules about it.

You must stay there at least for four five hours even if it’s not coming.

Only then I walk away.

When my children were young, that was also a great resource.

Saturday takes place in just one day in the surgeon’s life, but said from the protagonist’s perspective.

Saturday is written in the third person.

Anil Dharker asks,

What makes you choose whether to write in the first person or third person?

Was it something spontaneous or you think about it?

Ian McEwan replies, 

My default position is the third.

I am a little suspicious about the first person.

My standing position is – one must be very suspicious about the first person.

When you write in the third person, you really lay yourself on the line.

In the first person, you could excuse all your prose – allow mediocrity to flourish – by saying that’s my character.

You also have a freedom when you write in the third person.

You have a free direct style, to enter the mind of the character.

I’ve written in the first and in the third, but my heart and my brain remains in the third!

Anil asks, 

But why did you choose the first person for Machines like Me?

Ian McEwan replies,

Cos I wanted one person to be gauging himself.

I was entering the mind of the machine.

I wanted to live it myself, put myself in the hands and minds of my narrator, when he brings and unwraps this humanoid!

I’ve some writers say that characters take over, and they ride you!

Someone also said, they wanted to kill a character, but the character resisted.

Yes! D. H. Lawrence does that! I too take the ‘godly view’, that you create the characters out of a need, and you are responsible for them, you charge them, you direct them and you lead them, and you generate a kind of free will in the character.

Anil Dharker asks,

In Machines like Me the humanoids do the dishes and the bed, but they also think.

They learn quickly.

Interestingly, you have not set it in the future, but in the past.

Why did you do all this? Were you just amusing yourself?

Ian replies,

I wanted to analyse the existential problem of what the machine would be! By altering the past, I wanted to enter into a kind of long meditation – to see our alternative selves!

What if Alan Turing had not killed himself in 1954?

I wanted to raise a lot of What ifs

So it was integral to having a 70-year-old Alan Turing in this novel.

What if your mother had not stayed back to meet your mother!

You wouldn’t exist.

Maybe your father would have other children.

Among my acquaintances, who all met their spouses at their university, contingent factors, then what if they hadn’t met?

What if Trump retains the White House? Nancy becomes President elect?

What if Gore had triumphed over Bush. We might not have had the Iraq War.

So these What ifs have abundant scope of creativity to them!

Now Q & A starts… 💛

Question from Participant

What makes you use psychoanalysis as a tool of your writing?

Ian McEwan replies, 

I’m very skeptical of psychoanalysis as a cure for anyone! But it is a lovely indulgence for anyone! 

Question from Participant

Have you found yourself relating to any of your characters?

Ian McEwan replies, 

All of my characters are some side of myself, my fantasizing of myself, or characters from whom I’m trying to run away from! 

In fact, every cell of my body is in these characters!

Question from the Participant

What is the essence of a good suspense of a good thriller?

Ian McEwan replies, 

A good suspense novel should arouse curiosity at every stage. 

The first duty of the novelist is to be interesting, said Henry James. 

For the novelist who writes suspense novels, it is to thrill at every step! 

'Listening is learning from a teacher who is present - a living teacher - while reading is learning from one who is absent!'

The Present & the Absent Teacher

I’m really freaking out big-time on Mortimer’s How to Read a Book.

I’m sure it will be of immense use to those of us who engage with students [especially at the UG level,] to inculcate and to instill in them the ‘pleasures and the joys unlimited’ that one obtains by connecting with the art of reading.

In this particular episode, Mortimer talks about the Present and the Absent Teacher!

Look at his lovely line na – that we could frame it on our classrooms as well, I guess!

Listening is learning from a teacher who is present - a living teacher - while reading is learning from one who is absent!

And then he proceeds to give us an introduction to the four levels of reading!

Simply awesome! Simply mind-blowing!

So here goes –

How to Read a Book

The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

By

Mortimer J Adler &

Charles Van Doren

Present and Absent Teachers

Listening to a course of lectures, for example, is in many respects like reading a book; and listening to a poem is like reading it. We have been proceeding as if reading and listening could both be treated as learning from teachers.

To some extent that is true.

Both are ways of being instructed, and for both one must be skilled in the art of being taught.

Listening to a course of lectures, for example, is in many respects like reading a book; and listening to a poem is like reading it.

Yet there is good reason to place primary emphasis on reading, and let listening become a secondary concern.

The reason is that listening is learning from a teacher who is present - a living teacher - while reading is learning from one who is absent.

If you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you.

If, however, you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself.

In this respect a book is like nature or the world.

When you question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking and analysis yourself.

THE LEVELS OF READING

There are four levels of reading.

The first level of reading we will call Elementary Reading.

Other names might be rudimentary reading, basic reading or initial reading; any one of these terms serves to suggest that as one masters this level one passes from nonliteracy to at least beginning literacy.

In mastering this level, one learns the rudiments of the art of reading, receives basic training in reading, and acquires initial reading skills.

We prefer the name elementary reading, however, because this level of reading is ordinarily learned in elementary school.

Text to Film: Adaptations and Interpretations

 

LIVE with Shashi Tharoor...

LIVE with Shashi Tharoor! | Delhi: A Soliloquy

DC Books and Westland Publications organized a LIVE MEET on the occasion of the launch of the English translation of M Mukundan's Delhi Gathakal by Dr Shashi Tharoor.

The conversation was moderated by literary critic Resh Susan (The Book Satchel)

with Shashi Tharoor, 

Maniyambath Mukundan, (Author)

Fathima EV & Nandakumar K (Translators)

LIVE on Thursday, 29 October, 7 PM

But before that, the blurb to Delhi: A Soliloquy

It is the 1960s.

Delhi is a city of refugees and dire poverty.

The Malayali community is just beginning to lay down roots, and the government offices at Central Secretariat, as well as hospitals across the city, are infused with Malayali-ness.

This is the Delhi young Sahadevan makes his home, with the help of Shreedharanunni, committed trade union leader and lover of all things Chinese.

Then, unexpectedly, China declares war on India.

In a moment, all is split asunder, including Shreedharanunni’s family.

Their battle to survive is mirrored in the lives of many others: firebrand journalist Kunhikrishnan and his wife Lalitha; maverick artist Vasu; call girl and inveterate romantic Rosily;

JNU student and activist Janakikutty.

As India tumbles from one crisis to another - the Indo-Pak War, the refugee influx of the 1970s, the Emergency and its excesses, the riots of 1984 - Sahadevan is everywhere, walking, soliloquising and aching to capture it all, the adversities and the happiness.

Writer Mukundan observed…

There are no tragic events I won’t write about.

So these tragic events I particularly wanted to write about.

But usually I don’t respond immediately. That’s my nature.

This novel I’ve been thinking for more than 15 years.

So I got up at 4 o clock in the morning, had black tea and started writing till 8 am.

This is a little advice I’m sharing with you.

I wanted to talk about the Malayali migrants.

In the 60s very few Malayalis made it to the top. They were struggling.

There is a rosy image of the city of Delhi especially of Kerala.

But there is another side of Delhi, and I wanted to talk about this also.

The Malayali migration and the dark somber side of Delhi…

Fathima and Nandan came to my help. And a wonderful translation is there.

Sashi Tharoor then commented on author Mukundan and the book –