For seven years — from 2007 to 2014 — I wrote three books back to back, which is to say that during these seven years, I always had an unfinished manuscript waiting for me each evening as I got home from work.
A manuscript, as long as it remains unfinished, keeps you filled with hope. You eagerly return to it every evening, in the hope that it may shape up to be a bestseller and finally rescue you from the grip of anonymity. In other words, you have something meaningful to look forward to when you wake up in the morning other than, of course, earning your bread and butter.
During these seven years, I have never had the luxury of breaks between books: even before I could finish writing one, I would have signed the contract and gathered sufficient material to begin another. I purposely did not want that luxury because I dreaded not being able to look forward to my evenings.
But today, even though I have signed the contract for my fourth book, I have no material to start working on. To collect material, I need to travel to a certain city and spend considerable time there — something I cannot afford at the moment, maybe sometime in the coming months.
And so for the first time in seven years, I am, as a writer, without work.
But every evening, I open my laptop out of habit and tell myself: ‘Let’s make use of this break and write some mind-blowing fiction. After all, fiction is what decides your literary worth.’ I feel emboldened by the fact that many literary giants, such as Evelyn Waugh and V.S. Naipaul, did not take longer than six weeks to finish many of their celebrated novels. What’s more, I have so many stories to tell.
But each evening, as I stare at a blank word document on my laptop, I find a challenge staring back at me: what should be the opening sentence?
As a journalist, I had realised the value of an attention-grabbing intro early on in my career: back in the mid-1990s, when there was no Internet and when I worked with the Press Trust of India, I would carry home teleprinter copies of feature stories put out by Reuters and AFP. I would marvel at their opening lines — sometimes barely eight or 10 words long — and try to learn from them.
Ever since then, I have always found it impossible to proceed with a story — be it a piece for the paper or a chapter of my book — unless I am convinced that the opening sentence is perfect. Though there are times when, after the entire story has been written, I return to the opening line to tweak or rewrite it, but that’s a different matter. And so the wait continues for that perfect opening sentence to descend from heaven.
There are times when I am tempted to imitate the opening sentences of the masters: “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know” (Albert Camus in The Outsider ); “I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead” (Henry Miller in Tropic of Cancer ); or, “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it” (V.S. Naipaul in A Bend in the River ).
Soon my conscience nudges me and I seek refuge in the words of Hemingway ( A Moveable Feast ): “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” But the moment I write the truest sentence that I know, I find myself deleting the line instinctively. Truest sentences are not always easy to articulate. For that matter, the truest of stories can rarely be told.
As a result, the word document on my computer remains blank and literary greatness continues to elude me. Someday, when I am too old to worry about the consequences of telling the truest of stories that I know, maybe I will write a work of fiction. Until then, I shall stick to writing about big cities and small towns.
