Promise To Achievement
By Panos Karnezis
I feel very lucky that I can support myself doing something I love. Writing is a job in the sense that you are paid to come up with a book which has to make profit for you and the publisher, but it is also a very personal thing, a craft or art that brings to the surface something of the writer’s character, his obsessions, his sense of humour, his curiosity. The fact that a writer is paid to do it doesn’t make it any less personal or serious. I enjoy sitting on my own for several hours every day and using my imagination to create characters and worlds that don’t exist until I create them. I have a particular interest in magic realism, exactly because it lets free one’s imagination—whether he’s a writer or a reader.
Writing is not a stressful job, there are no tight deadlines to meet, emergencies etc., but it can be frustrating. When I was an engineer, some time ago, I had to be part of a team. Any problems I had with a project I could discuss with colleagues and my line manager, brainstorm ideas and the like, which is a very effective way to come up with solutions. But when writing a book one has to do all this on his own. A novel is a very private universe dreamed by the writer. If he had a committee to help him it would be an easier job and perhaps a faultless novel in every sense apart from the uniqueness of vision, the humour, the ideas behind it. Films today are often made this way, which is why truly original ones are rare. Besides, working on his or her own, a writer is a bit like a chess player, and showing him which piece to move next takes out all the excitement.
When I hit a creative brick wall I usually carry on, trying different techniques, changing the plot and the characters. It is rare that I give up and wait for inspiration to return. When I do, I usually read books—any book, it doesn’t have to do with what I’m working on at the time. I have found that it helps me to concentrate again.
I think that it is probably easier to publish a first novel today compared to the past because modern technology has made it cheaper to produce and distribute a book but also because people read more than they used to. But it is probably still hard to have a full-time career in writing. When you start to write you’re judged on promise, but two or three books down the line you are judged on achievement.
About the author:
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Panos Karnezis was born in Greece in 1967 and came to England in 1992. He studied engineering at Oxford and worked in industry before starting to write in English. He studied for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of Little Infamies, a collection of connected short stories set in a nameless Greek village, and two previous novels; The Maze, shortlisted for the 2004 Whitbread First Novel Award and The Birthday Party. His next novel, The Convent, will be published in January 2010 by Cape. |
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