I tried very hard not to be a writer. I told myself it was foolish and impractical. A path littered with disappointment and rejection. Yet I could never really convince myself to stay off it. So, one day, I took a deep breath and started writing. Since then. I haven’t stopped.
Would you please tell us a little about your writing process?
Since I currently have an academic job, I write primarily on weekends and on holidays. Sometimes I can get in an hour during the week. I usually have two projects that I work on—one is a long project such as a novel, the second is a short project such as a short story or an essay. It is usually easier to work on a short project during the semester and concentrate on the long project during the summer and winter vacation. That does not work, though, once I get deep into a novel. It takes a while to get back into the manuscript once you have put it aside for a couple of months. Therefore, once I am, say, twenty thousand words into a novel, I try to work on it as often as I can.
How do you believe a writer improves? Practice? Mentors? Reading everything? Attending festivals?
All of the above. Reading and writing go together. I believe to be a good writer you also have to be a good reader of other people’s work as well as your own. Furthermore, there is no substitute for writing, and writing a lot. That said, so much of writing is re-writing. That is where a good mentor/editor can be very useful. Writers are usually far too close to their own work. They need a pair of detached, informed eyes to move them in the right direction. And a literary festival is usually where you get to meet your writing heroes and, sometimes, interact with them and maybe even make a contact or two in the industry. So, yes, all of the above.
What motivated you to write?
The fact that I could not not write. I tried very hard not to be a writer. I told myself it was foolish and impractical. A path littered with disappointment and rejection. Yet I could never really convince myself to stay off it. So, one day, I took a deep breath and started writing. Since then. I haven’t stopped.
What is the best piece of advice you have received? Or, what is the best piece of advice you would offer an aspiring writer?
Don’t get into it for the money; there are far easier ways to make a living. That was probably the best piece of advice I ever received. I believe it allowed me to get into it for the right reasons. And that is the best advice I can pass on to an aspiring writer.
What is the role of the writer in society?
In my opinion, a writer’s job is to shine a light on society. It is an endeavour that has to be carried out with passion and honesty. Then only can it be worthwhile. At no time has that been more important than it is today. We live in a world that is lurching in the darkness of xenophobia; a world where reason and tolerance are fast falling even as a resurgent far right rises. These days I am frequently reminded of W.H. Auden’s poem “In Memory of W.B.Yeats” where he wrote: “Follow, poet, follow right/To the bottom of the night,/With your unconstraining voice/Still persuade us to rejoice.”
Who would you say are your literary forebears? Who have you learned the most from?
It was Yeats’ poetry that first inspired me. There was something that I connected to in his Celtic Twilight poems. Then it was the short stories of Joyce in Dubliners. When it comes to novels, the two writers who blew my mind were Salman Rushdie in Midnight’s Children and Rohinton Mistry in A Fine Balance. Two very different novelists and two very different books. One a tour de force in magical realism, the other almost brutal in its realism. Yet I remember reading and re-reading them and then returning to them later.
Which books is it most important for an aspiring writer to read?
Certainly, the classics. It took me a while to get round to reading them and, after I finally did, I wondered why I did not devour them earlier. Then contemporary literature. It allows you to see what everyone else is doing. Beyond that I think writers should read everything they possibly can.
Where are the best places to live / visit as a writer?
For me the best place for any writer is Ireland. When I visited Ireland, I vibed with the place immediately. Literature seemed to flow out of the walls. I remember walking in the hallowed grounds of Trinity College, Dublin, in a daze. There was no dearth of people interested in reading and writing. So, definitely, Ireland by a country mile. And, within Ireland, Dublin.
Vikram Kapur has published three novels in his native India. His short stories and essays have appeared in World Literature Today, Litro, Beloit Fiction Journal, The Hong Kong Review, Mekong Review, Ambit, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Berlin Quarterly, Huffington Post, The Hindu Literary Review, The Times of India, Himal Southasian, and other publications. His short stories have been recognised in several international competitions which include, among others, Britain’s Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, and Ireland’s Fish International Short Story Prize. He has held writing residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Canserrat Arts Center, and Under the Volcano. He has a PhD in creative and critical writing from the University of East Anglia where he received the India-Africa bursary. He currently works as a professor of English at the Shiv Nadar Institute of Eminence in India. His website is www.vikramkapur.com.