Author Interview with Jayant Swamy.

Author Interview with Mr. JAYANT SWAMY!! 

When did you first realize that you want to be a writer? 

 

Writing is perhaps part of my genetic fabric. An avid reader since childhood, I was always enamored by the power of the written word and the intricacies of the English language. Several stories always swirled around in my head. When I was in college, I put pen on paper and wrote some of these stories. When I sent them off to popular magazines, there was no response.

 

Circa 1998. I was emigrating to the US. Vikram Seth had made it big on the international writing scene with his novel ‘A Suitable Boy’. I bought a copy of the book at the Bombay airport. A routine activity you would think, but one that changed my life. Reading that epic novel, one of the longest published, my writing dreams, also took flight.

 

The transition began thereafter – it was an organic process rather than an event. I enrolled myself for a Certificate Program in Literary Fiction at the University of Washington. Over the next several years, I published two non-fiction anthologies, and went on to complete my first novel, ‘Colours in the Spectrum’.

 

2.          How long does it take you to write a book?

 

My latest novel ‘Family Secrets’ published by Vishwakarma Publications of Pune, was released in October 2020. The cover is designed by my literary agency The Book Bakers. From conceptualization to final manuscript – it took me three years to complete.

 

I had started writing it when my first novel ‘Colours in the Spectrum’ had not yet found a publisher. Once it was published, I took a hiatus to market that book before resuming work on ‘Family Secrets’.

 

3.          What comes first, the plot or characters? 

 

Writing is an iterative process. For ‘Family Secrets’ I first developed a four-page plot outline. The characters came after that.

 

Once I start writing, my characters take over from me, mapping their own emotional journeys and writing their own stories, with their own plot points. My creative challenge is to connect the plot points, sequence the major events and make the individual stories intersect, to form the plot.

 

For ‘Colours in the Spectrum’ the characters came first. The five characters have a shared past and each of them have their own emotional journey. The plot was developed to tie the stories together.

 

4.          Does your family support you?

 

Paraphrasing a quote by Barack Obama . . . ‘Marriage is the loving alignment of two people who could lead parallel lives without forgoing any independent dreams or ambitions.’ This is true of my wife and me as well. We pursue our respective passions and are respectfully supportive of each other’s pursuits.

 

5.          How do you develop your plot and characters?

 I have rolled the answer into 3 above

 

6.          Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?

 

I don’t believe in this either/or. Everything I write is intersectional to both. I try to be original AND deliver to readers what they want.

 

7.          How do you come up with the titles to your books?

 

Once I developed the plot outline – the story of two half-brothers, bound together by their father’s extra-marital alliance, who face-off – it was easy to come up with the title ‘Family Secrets’.

 

The protagonist of my first novel has a rare perceptive phenomenon called synesthesia where he associates people and emotions with a colour. I use different colours he ‘perceives’ to depict his emotional state throughout book. Hence the title ‘Colours in the Spectrum’.

 

8.          Which was the hardest part of your book to write?

 

I enjoy the process of writing. The fun is in creating, disrupting and re-creating. I did not find any part hard to write. I however wished to make my courtroom scenes, which form a pivotal plot point, as authentic as possible. I took help from my lawyer niece and reworked the court proceedings based on her recommendations.

 

9.          Describe your writing space.

 

My home office on the lowest floor of my slim three-storey duplex serves as my writing space. It gives me an awesome view of the city’s sky line. Here is a picture – worth at least a hundred words, if not a thousand!

 

10.         How do you handle writer’s block?

 

When the going is good it doesn’t get any better. When the going is bad and you think you’ve seen the worst, believe me, it can only get worse! This is so true of creative flow. It is beyond my control.

 

When the creativity flows, I write round the clock. When it does not, I reorganize, edit and restructure what I have written until then.

 

11.      How many hours a day do you write?

 

Depends. I work as a management consultant to make a living. My writing habits have been erratic historically. I must balance my writing time with my work, chores, fitness and any other interests I am pursuing at the time. The COVID situation has been the proverbial blessing in disguise. I now average 4-6 hours a day writing my next book even as I spend an equal amount of time marketing my novel.

 

12.     Do you have any suggestions to help a budding writer for becoming a better writer? If so, what are they?

 

You are the CEO of your own life. Exercise the power of individual choice. Whatever you do, give yourself to it fully, and do it with full conviction. My mother, a classical Carnatic singer, used to say: ‘Involve your soul, not just your body and mind. Experience the emotion within yourself. Let the song emanate from deep down. Throw your voice with full abandon.’ Something similar is true of writing. If you don’t enjoy the process of writing don’t become a writer.

Thankyou.