Booker Prize 2022 winner Shehan Karunatilaka speaks about his relationship with writing, the presence of absurdity as a theme in his diverse body of work, the importance of music, his upcoming new book and more.
Relationship with Writing
I do remember keeping diaries when I was around six or seven, maybe scribbling some story ideas, but yeah, it’s very vague. There might have been some fan fiction as well. I’d, like try, even before fan fiction was a thing, like for Spider-Man, but it never got very far. I think It was not until my thirties that I actually thought I’m gonna sit down and try my hand at writing. I wanted to be a musician. I was in advertising and so writing was my day job, but then I just came across a story and I thought to write it properly. I’d attempted it before, you know, how you sometimes write and then suddenly get fifty pages but then you don’t know where to go and give up. I had many of those experiences, but I think this time perhaps I was ready. Also, when you’re thirty, you have kind of lived a bit and you kind of know what you like and don’t like. Like, when I was growing up, I knew a lot of writers who wanted to do it ever since they could read. Not the case with me. I was just a reader first and then eventually got into writing.
Music in Writing
It’s only during the pandemic that I actually started learning the instrument and learning theory and all that. And I practice every day if I can. I bought some drums for the kids as well. It’s part of my writing process. I write for an hour or two hours and then I go play some keys on the piano and all. Same with cinema. I love watching cinema and I think it used to be my routine. I guess before the kids, I’d write in the mornings, have lunch and then watch a movie in the afternoon and play some music. And I think it all feeds into my writing, albeit not consciously. Maybe it’s something to do with rhythm that the writing flows more smoothly when I also play some music and watch some cinema.
The Process
My best hours are during early morning before these guys (my kids) wake up. So yeah, 4.00 to 8.00 am, I just turn up. I might light a candle. I might play with some coloured lights, put the playlist, all that procrastination. But I mostly just sit there and I try and have a goal. Not a word limit goal, but I wanna solve this problem, write this opening bit to this chapter, do a character outline. I’ll set specific and small goals. You might have good days or bad days, but I generally read for two hours a day, write for two hours a day and when things are flowing, you read for four hours and write for four hours. You do that every day for a year, you’ll have a book. And I think it’s as simple and as mundane as that. Along with that one has to revise as long as it takes. And that’s one thing I learned in my twenties, when I had all these unfinished projects, I realised with a bad piece of writing, if you rewrite it enough times, you can get it to a certain place. Whether you are motivated or not, sometimes you lose interest in the subject matter or you think, actually this isn’t saying anything and you might abandon it, but generally speaking, I don’t delete anything. It’s always there. Then suddenly, you might have a fragment from five years ago and you realise, this is it. So, I don’t throw anything away. I keep rewriting.
Thematic Thread
Well, I guess that’s for other people to say, because I don’t think of a theme when I’m writing, I think of plot and character. It’s after several drafts that you actually interrogate and say, what’s this thing actually about? But if you look at a common theme, I suppose it would be absurdity. Sri Lankan absurdity is a theme that is in all my short stories as well. The idea that it’s a beautiful country, it’s a sad country, it’s a tragic country, but it’s also an absurd country. I think if anything, I’d say that that will be a theme, but again, it’s not conscious. Only afterwards, you look back and you think, okay, that’s sort of what’s going on here.
This is an exclusive excerpt from our September EZ. To read the entire article and more such pieces, follow the link here.
Words Nidhi Verma
Date 22.09.2023