'I'm lucky to be one of the world's richest writers'

Sir Jeffrey Archer, while on a recent book promotion tour to Mumbai, took the candid route to speak on a range of topics from why journalists shouldn't be authors, to his controversial past and the predicament of the Indian author who writes in English

I have a strange connection with Jeffrey Archer. In 2005, when I was writing my collection of nine short stories, Nine On Nine, a friend insisted I call it Cat O' Nine Tales. I wasn't convinced and six months later Sir Jeffrey Archer's Cat O' Nine Tales went on to become, like most of his other books, an international bestseller.



I presented him with a copy of Nine On Nine last Sunday evening when he was in town to promote his latest novel, Only Time Will Tell (the first of his Clifton Chronicles). Noticing how the crowd mobbed him, I was sure he would have left it behind. But when I went to meet him the next morning, he waved my book and decided to give me a few tips on writing.

AN AUTHOR AND A JOURNALIST
"The first thing you must do if you want to be an author is you must stop being a journalist. This is very journalistic." "I agree," I said. "I find it na ve now." "That's okay," said Archer. "I find Not A Penny More ufffdvery na ve."

"I also realise that you cannot sit over your weekly deadlines if you want to write seriously and for the past two years I have stopped being a journalist," I added as I handed him my just released novel, Two Worlds, with the intention to impress.

"Good. Congratulations. I will definitely read it. You are a good story-teller," Archer waved Nine.... This coming from Jeffrey Archer, I almost collapsed with delight. According to The Daily Telegraph, "If there was a Nobel Prize for story-telling, Jeffrey Archer would surely have got it."

"Having said that," Archer quickly brought me back to reality, "You must think and use words wisely. No "screaming headlines" and "fancy houses" in future..." I swallowed, nevertheless impressed that he managed to read three of my short stories in a short span. "Yes, I did. Only the first and last page of each story."

That's Jeffrey Archer for you. Incorrigible, yet delightful. He wowed the audience at his book launch, where instead of a mundane book read, he made it interesting by picking on a young girl and having the audience laugh at her expense.

"I always do that. I pick on someone whom I feel can take my bantering and yet I let them win in the end because that way I get the audience's respect." Archer plays to the gallery and when I ask him whether he ever considered acting as a profession, he says, "Politicians are good actors. Don't forget I started out as one."

CONTROVERSY, THY MIDDLE NAME
Archer has lived a most controversial life. From his days at Oxford (where his status as a student remains questionable) to being a fund raiser to being plagued by several financial scams including the mysterious disappearance of several million pounds from the Kurdish Aid to the infamous call-girl, Monica Coghlan affair... where he won a five hundred thousand pounds from The Daily Star for defamation to be subsequently sued and jailed for perjury and sentenced for three years to the notorious Belmarsh prison from where emerged his bestselling Prison Diaries.

Yes, Jeffrey Archer has never let adversities get him down. "As writers we are vultures, constantly digging from people and situations." When I ask him what was his first reaction when he was sentenced." Horrible. But I didn't think much of the consequences then of losing out financially or socially. I thought it was like a long, tiresome flight, I had to take it and get over and done with it."

"You strike me as an impresario. On the lines of Ismail Merchant," I tell him. "Quite right. And I am honoured to be compared to him. He was keen to film one of my books but we never got around to it. "You started out as a politician, when did you become a writer?" I ask. " I started writing when I had to quit my political post due to the Aquablast affair and I lost most of my money. I did not write Not A Penny to bail myself out of my debts, nor did the book do so at the time. It seemed a happy twist of fate and I have enjoyed writing ever since. I'm lucky to be one of the world's richest writers though writing is not a well-paying profession."

AUTHOR, UNINTERRUPTED
Archer has written 30 odd books in a writing career of 35 years, averaging nearly a book a year. He follows a strict regimen when he is writing a book. He leaves England and retires to his house in Majorca, where he works for 12 hours a day, alternating every two hours of writing and thinking. "No phone calls, no socialising and no reading " when he is writing. Only his wife Mary is allowed to visit "provided she does not disturb me. So she doesn't spend much time there."

After several drafts and when the manuscript is ready for print, Archer returns to England where he catches up on his social life ufffd and reading. "I enjoy watching plays and I read a lot, on art and history. Had there been a subject like art history in my days, I would have been an art historian. I have a decent art collection. But I also read a lot of fiction, especially those recommended by friends."

What about Indian writers, particularly the ones writing in English? "I like RK Narayan's style. He writes simple and lucid English. Indians writing in English, despite having a command of the language seem to at times, unwittingly contradict it. Especially their use of words. They never seem to get the right words." "That is because though we write or think in English, we are not English," I try to explain.

"Could be. I thank my wife Mary for enriching my vocabulary. Her use of words is better and more appropriate than mine. And I think for a writer that is very important." Though writing is a very private affair and most writers are private people, Jeffrey Archer is a very public person. "I am first a storyteller and then a writer," he says. And therein lies the essence of Jeffrey Archer. Energetic.

Enthusiastic. Entertaining. And very much in tune with the changing trends. Twice, he corrected my "Bombay" for Mumbai and once my "Calcutta" for Kolkata and finally pronounced me "an old-fashioned convent girl and not the modern Indian girl who is comfortable in her outfit from Milano". Perhaps, the last of his Clifton Chronicles will talk of the modern Indian woman.

I can't blame Jeffrey Archer for telling me to "stop being a journalist and start being a writer."

Nandita C Puri is the author of Unlikely Hero, Two Worlds and Nine On Nine