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FAQ
Every month I receive a couple of emails from readers. Sometimes we even correspond, and the questions that pop up are often similar. Here are the long answers to the most frequently asked questions:
You claim on your website that your fourth novel is in the pipeline. When is it due out?
Well, it’s a very long pipeline and in the meantime there are three novels stuck in it, with at the moment no end in sight!
Writer’s block?
No, publisher’s block. I have not been able to find a publisher for them.
But you already have a publisher!
No. That publisher rejected Novel Number Four. Number Five and Six would have the same problem, as the common denominator is the same.
What is that common denominator?
They are set (mostly) in Guyana, my home country. Apparently most readers have never heard of Guyana and don’t want to read books about Guyanese characters.
Do you believe that is true?
Not at all. I believe my characters are real, as they come from the heart; and the conflicts they face are universal. The setting is Guyana because that is where I grew up. It’s the country and society I know best. I feel it is an advantage, a touch of the unknown to complement the real people and universal themes I deal with, not a handicap.
I also believe it is a mistake to think that readers are all lily-white. There is a huge readership out there consisting of black and ethnic minority readers, and they are not getting the books they want. A recent survey by HarperCollins found that the BME book market is estimated to be worth £120m and rising fast. They want characters from similar backgrounds and with similar roots and conflicts. I feel that hunger….
The fact is, I started writing novels because not one of the books I read beforehand dealt with the world I grew up in, the places and people I knew and loved. I wanted to bring that world to fiction, to readers who knew it and to those for whom it is completely new. It would be a betrayal to my country and my people and myself to choose a more “commercial” subject just to please the sales and marketing teams in publishing.
The sense of place, I feel, is the very essence of my writing. And it has to be authentic.
Publishing is a cowardly business. Publishers are afraid of risk, and that is why they like to follow trends, prescribe formulas. But good writing cannot follow a formula. There’s a magic about creation. My best writing springs completely unexpected from the mind with amazing vitality. If I would follow a formula or write to fill a publisher’s needs rather than my own I would lose all originality. Writing “for the market” is not for me. I want above all to be a good writer, and good writers are trend-setters, not trend followers. If that magic is present, readers will come.
In your interview on this website you said that your next book was to be set in India. What happened?
In fact, I did start writing a novel set once again in India. The first 100 pages came quite easily, and as always I wrote spontaneously, without an outline. But the deeper I got into it the more I realised: India is not my home country. There are nuances, subtleties about Indian life I can never, ever get… I don’t speak any Indian language; I didn’t grow up in a Hindu household. I have lived in India, but always either in or around an ashram; who wants to read a novel about meditation?
To achieve the depth of characters and kind of epic conflicts I aim at would be a virtual impossibility without being Indian myself. I don’t think any amount of research can replace the personal experience of actually growing up in a country. So I said no to my publisher. I decided to write something quite different, something from the heart, and take my chances. Unfortunately, it was not what my publisher wanted.
At the time, my agent told me that publishing is extremely xenophobic and that I should just “play the game”. I’m afraid that word “xenophobic” got my back up. I couldn’t play a xenophobic game to save my life. Not for a million pounds. So I parted company with her.
Do you regret that decision?
The short answer is: sometimes I do. Sometimes I walk into a bookshop and see the shelves filled with novels by authors who are now household names and I bleed a little inside. And I wonder if my reaction at the time was too much of a knee-jerk thing.
Perhaps I should just have taken a deep breath and tried to see things from her point of view. She had my career’s best interests in mind, and meant well. Maybe I should have been more cynical, more hard-nosed. Been a businesswoman.
On the other hand, sitting it out for a few years has made me a stronger, better writer. I am sure that had I “played the game” I’d be churning out second rate books by now, as stories do come easily to me and if there is no challenge, if I can write popular novels with a click of my fingers, why work hard to produce a better book? I would probably have grown lazy. I’d have been a pulp India-themed writer. There is no satisfaction in that.
Of course I would love to be published again, but not at any price and not through selling my soul. My son says that my latest books will be published posthumously!
I’ve been travelling a difficult road for the last few years but the rewards, I believe, are immense. It’s when you touch rock-bottom that you have to really dig down deep to find the gems. So the long answer is: no, I don’t regret it. Even if nobody else ever reads those three trunk novels, it’s the writing of them that counts. I have grown through these books, and through the experience of failure. In fact, I don’t believe in failure. In the story of my life the so-called failures have been merely semi-colons, pauses in which I find my feet to move on to even better pastures.
Good writers take time to mature, like good wine. They need to find their flavour, their voice. They need loyal publishers who recognise this, and readers who will grow with them. It is an unhurried process. They need to be strong in themselves, believe in their stories, and not pander to Mammon.
The clash comes from the brash, high-octane voice of marketing. Robust marketing is unavoidable but if it is allowed to take over it stifles creativity and the very magic that editors and readers crave. This aggressive climate makes in increasingly difficult for new writers to trust their own judgement. And with the huge advances being thrown around these days it is even harder for a writer to resist. It takes courage.
What are your trunk novels about?
LAST OF THE SUGAR GODS is a lush historical family drama set in Guyana; it tells the story of our fight for independence against a bullying Great Britain and USA, and of the dominating sugar planters who held the country in its fist.
It centres on three connected families caught up in that struggle; it’s rather epic! It’s also the story of the great reformer whose actions led to the institution of the Booker Prize; how many people know that the prize has its roots in Guyana?
(HOW BHOOMI FOUND HER FEET is a short story partly taken from this novel; it is being published in October 2008 in Tell Tales Volume 4, an Arts Council project.)
WHITE NIGHT is more of a psychological thriller. Most people who haven’t heard of Guyana have heard of Jonestown, where 900 Americans committed suicide in the jungle in 1978. WHITE NIGHT is a fictional re-creation of that tragedy, fact and fiction carefully woven together. I once lived on a pineapple farm not far from where it happened, so the topic does intrigue me. I don’t think the world knows the whole true story, and this book tries to get beneath the surface. This wasn’t just a bunch of whackos.
My latest, THE SMALL FORTUNE OF DOROTHEA QUINT, is quite different form the other two. On the surface it’s about a priceless postage stamp, the British Guiana Black on Magenta, the rarest stamp in the world. This stamp really exists, and it was in fact created by my great-great-grandfather, E. D. Wight.
For this novel I created a Guyanese family in which a similar stamp turns up, causing a huge hullabaloo. In fact, the stamp is just a catalyst for another, deeper story about three women of three generations, and the tragedy that binds them together. This story is set partly in London—two of my women being immigrants!—to make it easier for readers to face the horrors of an unknown country! An agent who read it compared it to Andrea Levy’s Small Island; three characters in two countries, woven together around a secret and everything coming together in the end. The London setting makes it contemporary and familiar, while the Guyana part adds the “exotic” element.
A compromise, then? Have you decided to “play the game”?
Well, I think the London part does make it more attractive to British publishers, but we shall see. The Guyana part is actually much stronger; that is the real story. So you could say I’m tricking them into moving past their xenophobia?
So what’s your next goal?
To find the right agent and editor. I need an editor who loves my novels and believes that readers too will love them. Apart from that… just to keep writing. There’s a time and a season for everything. I believe my time will come.
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