Original subtitles

SALMAN RUSHDIE: I think it's quite normal when

you are starting out on a life as a writer

that you should be filled with uncertainty and doubt.

And it's worst at the beginning.

It actually never completely goes away.

You always worry that what you're doing is rubbish.

But at the beginning, you have to overcome that, and I did.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

If somebody says to me, "Can I see what you're doing?"

If somebody says to me, "Can I see what you're doing?"

and my reaction to that is to feel embarrassed,

then I know immediately that it's not ready.

I think embarrassment is an infallible test

because, of course, what we're all

trying to do is to write things that we want

other people to read, you know, that we're happy and excited

for other people to read.

And if we are embarrassed to show it,

it means we know, in our heart of hearts,

that it ain't there yet, you know.

that it ain't there yet, you know.

And I have frequently found that, you know, my book

editor has said, how are you doing with your new book

and can I see something, and I go, you know,

eh, just wait a bit because I know it's not ready to show.

And then, there is another moment

when I become excited to show it, when I think,

OK, yeah, I now want people to read it,

and that the embarrassment reflex has disappeared.

And when that happens, I think you

And when that happens, I think you

will know that the moment has come, you know,

when other eyes need to alight on the page.

There are writers who show people things all the time,

you know, almost every day if they have,

like, a significant other, or they have a good relationship

with an agent or an editor.

They're always sending pages to be told whether they

work or not, to be reassured that the thing is going

a good direction or to be asked questions

which they need to resolve about what they've sent, you know.

which they need to resolve about what they've sent, you know.

And there are other writers who hug it to themselves

until it's much more complete.

And, again, you have to work out--

that's a temperamental issue.

I remember going to--

a long time ago--

going to a reading given by the writer John Irving, in which he

prefaced his reading by saying what

I'm going to read you now is a first draft of something

I'm writing.

And I want you to tell me where you think all the problems are.

And I want you to tell me where you think all the problems are.

I thought, that's just terrifyingly brave of him,

you know, to show work which he knows to be imperfect

and to actually ask the audience to help him.

That was extraordinary, I thought.

I would be far too nervous to do a thing like that.

My way of doing it has been always

to take it as far as I can by myself without showing it.

to take it as far as I can by myself without showing it.

And I think one of the things you learn

is when you're not making things better,

you're just pushing things around

and making them different.

You know, I think you have to learn to see that moment,

you know.

And at that moment, that's what I would call finishing.

At that moment, I become very, very interested

in what other people have to say, what my editor has to say,

what two or three good friends, who will tell me the truth,

have to say.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The most important thing is to know who will tell you

the absolute truth.

What you should not need is somebody to pat you on the back

and tell you you're wonderful.

No, that's not helpful.

Even if it's true, it's not helpful.

You need people who will say this is exactly what I

You need people who will say this is exactly what I

felt when I was reading it.

That over here, you kind of lost my attention,

and over here, you got it back.

Sometimes when you're writing, you know,

you're so immersed in it, you're so close to it,

that it's difficult to have the objectivity

of another pair of eyes.

You know, it doesn't have to be a publisher or an agent,

or it doesn't have to be a business relationship.

As long as there are people who you think

As long as there are people who you think

are good readers that you know, who

will read what you've written and give you

a truthful response to it, that's what you need.

There's a kind of miraculous thing that happens.

When your book that you have hugged to yourself for however

long you've worked on it-- you know, it's

just been you and the book.

There's nobody else there.

The moment when the book leaves your desk, and it's just-- it's

on somebody else's desk, before they've said anything

to you, just the fact that you know that other people's

to you, just the fact that you know that other people's

eyes are on the book, it makes you look

at the book in a different way.

And just that, before anybody said anything to you,

that can help you see things.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

When I hand a draft of the book to an early reader,

I say nothing at all.

I tell them nothing.

I want to see how they read the book without my

I want to see how they read the book without my

trying to influence them.

Because, you know, you want the book to speak for itself.

When somebody buys a book in a bookstore,

it doesn't come with the writer's explanation.

It's just the book, and it has to do the work by itself.

So my view is, if I give you the book to read,

I'm going to say nothing.

I'm just going to let you read it and see what your take is.

You can't help the book by telling your early readers what

You can't help the book by telling your early readers what

they should see in it.

The question is whether they do see the things

you want them to see.

And if they don't, how can you make sure that they do?

How can you improve the text to make sure

that they do see what you want them to see?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

When you get notes or editorial comments either from a friend

or from an editor, you should take them seriously and really

or from an editor, you should take them seriously and really

think about them.

But you should also remember that in the end,

this is your book and you know it better than anyone else.

And if it doesn't feel right to you, don't do it.

Very few editors will force you to make a change

just because they think so.

If you can say why you think that you don't want to do it,

If you can say why you think that you don't want to do it,

then you should-- you know, there

are moments when you have to stick to your guns

and just say that you want it that way.

Having said that, I mean, I always

pay very serious attention to my editor's notes.

And I would say, thinking of the last two or three books,

that probably 75% of them were things

that led me to do something, something

that led me to do something, something

small sometimes and something larger at other times.

But and there were about 25% of them where I thought,

no, I don't want to do that.

So you should think about it that way, that everything that

comes to you in the way of notes needs

your serious consideration, you know.

But that doesn't mean that you don't have the right to say no.

I've had, you know, editors very shrewdly

put their finger on where problem points are

put their finger on where problem points are

in a manuscript.

And I mean, I think the great publishing editor

is able to show you where the difficulty is, but doesn't

tell you how to fix it.

You know, just says here, I've got a problem.

See what you can do with this.

And then, you go away and fix it.

It's usually not that helpful when somebody tells you,

you should do it like this.

But to have somebody putting their finger

on points along the way where they think you--

there's some problem, that can be very helpful,

and you should be open to that.

and you should be open to that.

Not to think about it as an adversarial relationship

is a good thing.

You know, because that--

if you do, then it makes you defensive.

Actually, the only thing that matters

is getting the book as good as it can be.

Because once it's published, it's

going to stay in that form for a very long time.

So the best thing you can do is to have--

as I say, if you have a good relationship with one book

editor, work with them.

Work with them, and try and come to an agreement.

Work with them, and try and come to an agreement.

You know, and it's to that extent,

it becomes a collaborative process at that moment.

Having been a solitary process for most of its life,

at the very end, the book becomes

a bit more collaborative that you're

working with somebody to--

with a common goal, you know, which

is to try and get it as good as it can be.

It's difficult because you feel very possessive about the work

you've made.

You feel, you know, proud of it, and you

feel sometimes defensive of it.

But I think you have to be open to that kind of conversation

But I think you have to be open to that kind of conversation

if you feel that the person you're

having a conversation with is basically in sympathy

with what you're trying to do.

You know, that's to say you don't

want somebody who really wants it

to be a different kind of book.

That's not helpful to you.

But if you know that you're, so to speak,

both pulling in the same direction,

you're both trying to make the book that exists as good as it

can be, then it's then that kind of-- those readings

can be, then it's then that kind of-- those readings

can be very helpful.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

To give you an example, after "Midnight's Children" was

accepted by the publishers, before it was published,

when it was going through an editorial process,

one of the readers suggested that there

was a redundant character.

Like, in the original, in that version

of the book that I had submitted,

the narrator Saleem was not only telling his story

the narrator Saleem was not only telling his story

to this woman, Padma, who works in his pickle factory.

There was a second audience figure as well.

And this reader said to me, you don't need that.

You already got your audience figure.

You don't need another one.

And my initial response was defensive.

You know, hang on, my book-- you know,

not an unnatural response.

Two or three other people read the book,

Two or three other people read the book,

and they all said the same thing.

So then, I thought, OK, I'm going to try it.

I'm going to try and remove this character.

And if it's very difficult to remove the character,

I will tend to believe that I'm right and you're wrong.

But let me try.

And when I sat down to remove the character,

I removed the character from the book in 24 hours.

It just fell out on the floor.

And that showed me that they had been right.

And the book now, as published, is much better

And the book now, as published, is much better

for having lost that character.

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With "Midnight's Children," I thought, if this doesn't work,

then maybe I don't know what a good book is,

you know, and maybe I should do something else with my life.

You know, so it was like Hollywood or bust

with that book.

You know, and fortunately, it wasn't bust.

But yes, I was full of doubt.

I have to say pretty scared all the way through writing it,

I have to say pretty scared all the way through writing it,

and indeed, when I'd finished, because it's an immense book.

You know, I mean, it's something like a quarter

of a million words.

You know, it's like 600 pages.

And I had no reputation as a writer at all at that point.

I mean, I had published one previous novel

that, to be frank, had not done very well.

You know, and so, yeah, I was completely afraid

You know, and so, yeah, I was completely afraid

that the book would have no future.

You know, even when I finished it, one part of my head

was saying that I was pretty pleased with it, that I felt

that, as far as I could tell, it was as good a book as I could

write.

And another part of my head was saying,

who's going to want this?

Here's this kind of weird novel that

has no European or American characters in it.

has no European or American characters in it.

It's all brown people.

Actually, there's one white guy in it, but it's a small part.

And I thought, you know, who is going

to want to read this, apart from a few close friends

and family members?

And I was full of doubts about whether it would even

find a publisher.

And that went on until, I mean, I was lucky in that, basically,

the first publishers in the UK who

saw it wanted to publish it.

saw it wanted to publish it.

And then I discovered afterwards that even

that hadn't been a certain thing, that actually

the first reader's report on "Midnight's Children"

that was sent to Jonathan Cape with the British publishers,

now part of Random House, was very negative.

It was actually very short.

It said something like this novel

is a fat ramble through the author's mind,

and he should concentrate on short stories

and he should concentrate on short stories

until he has mastered the novel form.

I mean, about as bad a review as you can get.

And fortunately, I had a-- well, there

was an editor at the publishing company

who thought better of it than that.

And she sent it out for a second reader's report,

which was very favorable.

And then the editors between them at the company

decided that they would go along with the favorable report

and not the unfavorable.

And I never knew about this at the time.

You know, I found out about it later.

When the novel had been published

When the novel had been published

and when it had won the Booker Prize,

some newspaper got hold of this story

that it had had a bad reader's report and published it.

And I called my publisher, and I said, what's this nonsense?

And then, they admitted that it was true.

So fortunately, I found out about it

when it didn't matter, because it

would have certainly only added to my absolute doubt

about what I'd done.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

These days, you know, for a lot of people, a lot of writers,

their most long-term relationship is not

with their publishing editor, but with their literary agent.

Publishing has become a world in which people move jobs

all the time.

You know, you don't necessarily have the same editor for a book

after book after book.

You do if you're lucky.

But you probably have the same agent

for a lot of your life as a writer.

And that may be the person with whom you need to have a--

And that may be the person with whom you need to have a--

if the book isn't finding a home easily,

it may be that it is the agent and you

who can sit down and think about what might need to be done.

And it's possible the agent will say to you, look,

there's a lot of publishers.

You only need one of them who's going

to get it and like what you do.

So let's keep going.

And I know a lot of writers who have been turned down

by 20, 25 editors, publishers, and have then found one,

by 20, 25 editors, publishers, and have then found one,

and then the book's been very successful.

I mean, that's-- most famously, that's true of Harry Potter.

It was turned down by a lot of people.

And look what happened.

So it is true that if you end up with one place

where people get it, people get what you've

done, that's all you need.

So it may be that your agent will encourage you not

to despair and to keep going.

Or you may agree that there's something you need to fix.

You know, if a number of publishers

You know, if a number of publishers

are all coming back and saying the same kind of thing

about what they have a problem with,

then maybe you need to try and think about that.