Writers on how they write: Amitav Ghosh
The Wall Street Journal has a great article: “How to Write a Great Novel”, reflections by 11 novelists on how they approach writing. I’ll feature one writer per day, highlighting their process with a key excerpt from the article.
Today’s writer is Amitav Ghosh whose novels include “The Hungry Tide” and “Sea of Poppies.”
Mr. Ghosh writes by hand, then types a manuscript onto his laptop. Every morning, he revises what he wrote the day before. Every sentence that appears in his books has been through at least 20 revisions, he says.
Mr. Ghosh, who is now working on the sequel to “Sea of Poppies,” which is part of a trilogy, is particular about everything from his pen to the type of paper he writes on. He insists black ink Pelikan pens are the best, and buys white, lined paper from a French manufacturer. “If you work on paper so much, you get obsessive about even the spacing of the lines,” he says. “I need them to be fairly widely spaced.”
I’ve been using the same pen type for over two decades: Pentel Rolling Writer (black). I’m actually rather obsessive about it. I like it because the ink flows freely which helps because my writing hand is always trying to keep up with what I’m hearing in my brain. Fine line pens slow me down. How about you? Favorite pen?
[Originally posted November 20, 2009]