Original subtitles

I find that when you're alone in your room

with just you and the piece of paper or the computer screen,

your mind works in a way that it doesn't work at other times.

Because the act of writing opens the mind,

opens windows in the head, which let

in all kinds of stuff that isn't normally available to you.

Out of that, you can make your story.

When I was starting out, I--

I had a very bumpy start.

You know, it really was by no means plain sailing.

I mean, I left university at, you know, the age of 21,

wanting to be a writer.

And to be frank, I wrote a lot of garbage, you know.

I wrote one, two, three novel length works

I wrote one, two, three novel length works

that were never published.

And-- and I'm now profoundly grateful that they

weren't published, because they would

have been deep embarrassments.

And they would have affected my literary reputation very

adversely.

But I was-- you know, I was writing a lot.

These are three quite extended--

like, 300, 400 pages in a couple of cases.

You know, and they weren't good.

You know, and they weren't good.

And meanwhile, all around me was this generation

of young writers who were finding their way very early,

you know.

Writers like Ian McEwen, and Martin Amis, and Julian Barnes,

and Kazuo Ishiguro, and so on.

It seemed to me that they knew what they were doing right

from the beginning.

And I was lost, in a way.

And at a certain point, I understood

And at a certain point, I understood

that part of the reason why I was lost

is that I had grown up in one culture,

and I was living in another.

And I didn't quite understand my relationship

with either, either the culture that I

had grown up in or the one that I was living in.

And that I really needed to work that out for myself, you know.

And in other words, to work out who I was, you know.

Because if you're not clear about who you--

Because if you're not clear about who you--

who you are, then--

then you're not clear about what-- about how to write.

Because the writing should come out of your deepest self.

What you are saying, essentially, in a book,

is you are saying to the world, you're saying,

this is how I see it.

I see it like this.

This is-- this is my take on things.

And you want to feel that whatever it is that you've done

will resonate with people.

So I mean, I would say the essential judge can only

So I mean, I would say the essential judge can only

be yourself.

And it can be whether you feel that you've

been as honest and truthful as you could be.

One of the things I think you really

need to be if you're going to be a writer

is to have a real determination to be a writer.

Put it like this.

I-- I left university in 1968.

I-- I left university in 1968.

Midnight's Children was published in 1981.

That's very close to 13 years of learning how

to become a writer that was--

and writing something that people want to read.

So for me, it took me more than a decade

of stumbling around in the dark in order

to finally find my way.

I mean, if somebody was to ask me now,

would you be prepared to spend 13 years of your life trying

would you be prepared to spend 13 years of your life trying

to learn to do something without any guarantee

that you will be any good at it at the end,

you know, I would probably find that to be not doable,

you know.

And yet, that younger self of mine--

actually, I'm rather proud of him,

that he had that determination to hang in there

and try and try, try again, and keep going, you know, and--

and eventually get there.

and eventually get there.

If you want it to come easily, then you're

probably in the wrong line of work.

You know, if you're willing to accept the difficulty,

and the rejection, and, you know, the bruises to your ego,

and the feelings of doubt, and self-criticism,

and feelings of a loss of self-worth,

all that stuff that happens when your writing is not going well

and when it's not recognized, when you yourself feel you

and when it's not recognized, when you yourself feel you

haven't done it, you haven't really done anything worth

doing yet--

that's the hardest part about starting as a writer.

And you need to have in you that real

need to do it, which will drive you past those obstacles.

And if you don't have that real need to do, then really,

truthfully, do something else.

You know, because this is hard.

And you want-- you need to be the kind of person for whom it

matters so much that you're willing to hang in there

matters so much that you're willing to hang in there

and stick with it until you get there.

One of the things that all writers talk about is--

is writer's block moments when--

where nothing seems to be coming,

you know, when there's an empty space where

your next book should be.

When you finish a book, many writers, including me,

When you finish a book, many writers, including me,

have that feeling that, oh my god,

I'll never think of another one.

You know, that this is all there is.

I'm finished.

And that's-- that's natural.

You know, because your head is full of a book.

And then it empties out.

And for a while, it feels like there's just an empty space

with nothing in it.

And you can feel that that--

that nothing will ever come back, nothing will--

that nothing will ever come back, nothing will--

nothing will fill up that void.

And sometimes there have been quite substantial gaps,

you know, like, as long as a year sometimes,

when-- when I haven't known what the next project is.

And you could call that writer's block.

But what I call it is actually a very creative phase.

Because what it allows you to do is

to think in a completely free form way.

And so every day, you sit down at your desk.

And you think, what's in my head today?

And you think, what's in my head today?

And you just let--

let something come out.

Just let it come out, whatever it is,

you know, in whatever form, however fragmentary.

You know, you just allow your imagination

a kind of open season, without censorship.

Just let it come out.

And-- and very often, the next day you

look at what you wrote before.

And it's all garbage.

You know, and you go on with that.

You go on writing garbage.

You go on writing garbage.

You know, and what I've found is that through that very open

minded period of-- of allowing your mind

to go wherever it wants, without restraint, what eventually

begins to happen is that something sticks.

You wake up the-- in the morning,

and you're still thinking about the thing you

were thinking about yesterday.

And then the next day, you're still thinking about it.

And then I ask myself, why am I still thinking about that?

And then I ask myself, why am I still thinking about that?

What is it about that that is the thing that I don't just

immediately throw away?

And out of that little germ that has shown up,

very often the next book comes.

The thing that-- that your imagination throws up,

that sticks.

I find that when you're alone in your room

with just you and the--

and the piece of paper, or the computer screen,

whatever it is, your mind works in a way

whatever it is, your mind works in a way

that it doesn't work at other times.

Because the act of writing opens the mind,

opens windows in the head, you know, which let

and all kinds of stuff that isn't normally available

to you.

You know, and out of that, you can make your story.

So I don't call it writer's block anymore.

I think of it as a--

as a period in which your mind, your imagination,

is given free rein.

And out of that, eventually, if you have the confidence

And out of that, eventually, if you have the confidence

to hang in there and keep going, the next thing will come.

I'm always looking for something I

haven't done before, you know.

And I think that's not a bad way to think about your work,

you know, that if--

if you do something, and it works out,

and people like it, et cetera, it

doesn't mean you should spend the rest of your life

doing that thing over and over again, you know.

Try to-- each time you write something, try to move on.

Try to take a step in a direction

you haven't been before.

And-- and, for me, that's a question

that I ask myself every time I begin a project.

What can I do that I--

that isn't just repeating what I've done.

In most of my books, central characters

have been of Indian-Pakistani origin.

You know, at least the-- the main characters tend--

they have been.

they have been.

I wanted to challenge myself to see

if I could have a central figure, a narrator figure, who

didn't have that background, you know, and--

and to see if I could make that convincing.

In my novel The Golden House, I had

a narrator who I made deliberately very unlike me.

First of all, he's much, much younger than me.

He's-- he's a-- he's a young man.

And secondly, he is a born and bred New Yorker, as opposed

And secondly, he is a born and bred New Yorker, as opposed

to somebody like me who arrived here

after a long period of life elsewhere.

So he's not like me in either race, or age, or belonging.

You know, and in that novel where many of the major

characters are, in fact, immigrants like myself,

I wanted there to be-- deliberately wanted there to be

a narrator who was not like that, you know, who was a--

a narrator who was not like that, you know, who was a--

if you like, who was a local and looking at the world

and looking at the other characters through the eyes

of--

of a young man who was--

who had no history in other countries.

You know, who was born and bred in--

in America, and specifically, in New York City.

That was quite a challenge.

First of all, to write about somebody who was maybe

40, 45 years younger than me--

40, 45 years younger than me--

you don't want him to sound like an old man.

You know, you want--

you want him to sound of his time.

And that creates issues of--

of slang, of usage, and even just of knowledge.

I mean, what are the things that somebody who's 25

knows and thinks about?

You know, which may not be the same things

that somebody my age knows and thinks about.

To create credibly somebody-- and to speak through the voice

To create credibly somebody-- and to speak through the voice

of somebody who's much, much younger than you, you know,

is--

I mean, that was a challenge.

It gave me a certain kind of freedom

to write through the voice of this ambitious young man.

I felt that it made the book have a quality of youthfulness,

which I liked.

I liked the kind of energy that you

can-- that you can give to somebody who's

trying to make their way in the world, and is--

has very ambitious dreams for himself.

has very ambitious dreams for himself.

I mean, he's a young filmmaker.

And-- and he envisages himself, you know, as a great filmmaker.

But he hadn't made any films yet.

So that person on the threshold of life,

you know, somebody trying to begin

and having all kinds of dreams about what he

might be able to do, that was--

it was a kind of liberation to me to be able to--

in a way, to return to something like my own much younger self

in a way, to return to something like my own much younger self

before I'd published anything with all kinds of dreams.

So I was able to connect him to--

to my memories of my beginnings, you

know, but in a completely different context and setting.

Well, before I was writing my novel Shalimar the Clown,

I was going through a process like this.

I was going through a process like this.

And I wrote down one day a murder scene.

You know, I wrote down an account of a--

a dead man on the floor on the road.

And standing over him, a man with a knife.

And the only other thing I knew is

that the-- in the house behind them

lived the daughter of the dead man.

And I didn't know who they were.

And I didn't know who they were.

I didn't know-- who is the dead man?

Who is the murderer?

Who is the daughter?

I had no idea.

I just-- this image came to me, and I wrote it down.

And then it stuck.

And I find myself thinking, what is this?

And explaining it to myself, learning

who they were, these creatures that my imagination had thrown

up, led me to that novel.

Because the novel grows out of that scene,

once I could begin to understand who the dead man was,

and who the murderer was, and who the daughter was.

and who the murderer was, and who the daughter was.

And what I found is the moment at which I solved

the mystery was I realized that there

was one character who was not in the scene whose presence

explained what was happening.

There was-- there was a second woman who

had been the lover of the murdered man,

the wife of the murderer, and the mother

of the girl in the house.

So this-- the absent woman was the thing

that linked the three figures that I

that linked the three figures that I

had and explained the story.

You know, it became a revenge tragedy.

And so I found myself writing a revenge tragedy.

But it literally came out of this process, which

you might have called writer's block, you know,

a process of stumbling around in the dark

and not really knowing what was going to happen.

And then in the end, this happened.