The Way to Look at the World

Li Feiyan: What does writing mean to you, and what inspired you to become a writer?

Romesh Gunesekera(R.G): Writing is very important to me. Because that is the way I like to look at the world, and the way I can think about things that are happening. What inspired me to become a writer is because I like reading books since I was a young boy, and want to be able to do whatever those people did, and make a book like that.

Li: It seems that you have a special feeling toward Sri Lanka, just because it’s your birthplace? What kind of role does Sri Lanka play in your life and writing?

R.G: It’s very important to me because I was born there and my family came from Sri Lanka. Though I have not live in Sri Lanka for most of my life, but I still feel very connected to it. I regularly go back to Sri Lanka, and I have family and friends there. And because the world is getting smaller and smaller, I don’t feel it makes a big difference where you live, especially for a writer, it’s more to do about what you think about, and what is important to you. I have become more and more interested all over the year in it since I started writing books, partly because Sri Lanka itself has a very difficult and hard time in the last 25 years with civil war, with series of troubles and unhappiness which is unjustified. Those make me unhappy, and give me some afflatus¹ to write something about it.

Li: Comparing to the writers who recreate what they see and what they hear in the real life, you call yourself an imaginative² writer. Why do you like to write with imagination?

R.G: I think what I mean of imaginative writer is different from a writer who write what accurately³ happened in our life. For example, what do you do? You report on something, and then your obligation is to make sure that what you write truly reflects what is happening. An imaginative writer is someone for whom what really happened inside themselves, inside their minds is the important thing. Therefore, an imaginative writer is to make something true, not to make it a truly reflection of the accurate joining of something, but to make something feel true. I think there is a difference, because an imaginative writer can be in one room and meet one person, and that would be a way enough for them to produce something that means something to many other people.

Li: The society today is materialized, it seems that fewer and fewer people would like to stop and read some books peacefully. As a writer, does it upset you?

R.G: It is something I think about, many writers think about and we often talk about. The society all over the world is more materialized, more consumerized, and people have less time to think. But in a strange way, at the same time, I think there is a desire that people have for some contrast⁴ to their lives. It is like a kind of hunger we have for using our imagination. It is a little bit like eating the same food all the time, and you suddenly want something different, something more substantial⁵. You don’t want something coming visually⁶ all the time you want something coming from inside itself. I think that hunger is there, and people want it, so that even in a society that has become very consumerized, very soon, they also seem to want to consume writing and books. It seems to me that in some countries’ bookshops -- even like the bookshop where we in – these are full of people. Most of them maybe are looking for books to help them in their careers, but I think there is also an increasing number of people who want to read for their own. There is actually a going interest in writing, in reading fictions, and in developing that. I’m quiet hopeful, I think for a period it is very consumerized and materialized, but very soon they will find more time, and need to use that time to read books.

Li: Just as what you mentioned yesterday, some people write to earn money, some to gain glory, and some just have an eager to tell stories, so why do you write?

R.G: I think I write because I always want to write, I like to write things, and I have tried to make more and more time for myself to write. I write to communicate, and I want to make something that people can appreciate. There is no guarantee that people will read your book, there is no guarantee that the next book you write will be any good, but I will continue to write books, to keep on writing for my own interest.

Li: If I want to be a writer, what should I do? What’s the qualification⁷ for a good writer?

R.G: There is no qualification, but if you want to be a writer, what you have to do most of all is to spend a lot of time on writing. And that is the most difficult thing for most people. A lot of people dream of becoming a writer, but they never spend time on writing. They just say I will do some next week, next month and next year. To be a writer you have to be able to write whenever you don’t want to write regularly. To spend a lot of time means it has to be more important than going to films, sometimes more important than doing a job. That becomes difficult because if you don’t do your job, you don’t have any money, but you have to sacrifice such things.