Vikas Swarup Quotes

You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.

The first audience that you have when writing a book is you.

I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.

It seems to me in the past it's been a good thing, as a writer, to have experiences I hadn't expected.

I want to get within myself and write. I really, really want to write.

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

I used to think that when I finished a book, I was finished with it. But it's like a wonderful Hydra. Every time a head disappears, more heads appear, so I will be writing for the rest of my life. The more books I write, the more books I find that I still have to write about. I use it like an inspiration, and that's wonderful.

I didn't know I was gonna be a writer when I started out.

I didn't really get serious about my own writing until I was convinced it was something that I wanted to do, that I wanted to spend that much time alone.

I was going to write a book one day and I actually did. To have it is a major accomplishment for me.

I never imagined I'd write a book.

For the years I spent working on it, 'Constellation' was the only novel I knew how to write, so maybe I still abided by the maxim? Regardless, I prefer the maxim: Write what you want to know, rather than what you already know.

When I went to college I took a creative writing class and decided in a week to be a writer.

If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.

I'm writing a book and working on my one-woman show, Learning To Be Human.

I discovered that writing was very nice indeed when I was very young, and I never changed. I don't think my style has changed very much at all - though I hope what I say is a bit more interesting. It's about getting to know a character and loving them, I think.

And once I know what the first page is, then the rest will come.

It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing.

I started blogging a decade ago because I like blogging. Writing's a kind of lonely thing to do, and I liked the idea of demystifying the process because I loved it as a kid and teenager and as somebody who wanted desperately to write.

For any writers at all, read everything you can and then put your butt in the chair and write. That's all there is to it.

Doing interesting things and then writing about them is the best way to become a good writer.

I was very fortunate that my first novel captivated the imaginations of so many readers who asked for a sequel. After that, one book led to another as I discovered other facets to my characters I wanted to investigate further.

In my early twenties, that's when I really began to write. Before that, I was too busy working, keeping myself going.

Writing was my route to creative expression, and I needed to write about the things that interested me.

I've written only two novels, but they're both long ones, and they each took a decade to write.