How Long to Write a Booker Prize Novel?
How long does it take to make a Booker Prize novel? “Seven years.” If you ask Kiran Desai, the 2006 Man Booker Prize winner with her novel The Inheritance of Loss, that will be her answer. Here’s the excerpt of her interview with India newspaper The Hindu during her South Asia tour for promoting her book:
How has the Booker changed your life?
There has been a total transformation. I kept my mouth shut for seven years [during which she wrote The Inheritance of Loss]. Now all I do is talk. (laughs)
The last time we spoke — which was a few days before you won the Prize — you had said that you planned on working on another novel by the end of the year. But a recent reported datelined Galle, suggested you were worried that there may not be another novel in you.
I did not say anything close to that. What I said is that I don’t know what I am going to do next. It’s always true for me … the process of writing reveals the book to me. I have to sit on my desk and the process reveals the book. I never know in advance. And this is always a risk. You don’t know what is going to come out. I may not work. So I probably said something to that effect.
I didn’t know whether this book [The Inheritance of Loss] would work … whether there would be enough material to put it all together. And surely any writer worries what is going to come next.
Is there a germ of an idea already?
Not really. But a shadow of something that is perhaps pretty much unconscious. But I do want to sit at my desk again. 
Kiran Desai Photo by Bhagya Prakash K./the Hindu
I kept my mouth shut for seven years [during which she wrote The Inheritance of Loss].
For complete interview read here.
The little Plumpuppets are fairies of beds;
They have nothing to do but watch sleepyheads;
They turn down the sheets and they tuck you in tight,
And dance on your pillow to wish you good night!
~Christopher Morley
What we remember from childhood we remember forever – permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen. ~Cynthia Ozick
There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
I got rid of my teeth at a young age because I’m straight. Teeth are for gay people. That’s why fairies come and get them. ~Dana Snyder
Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething. ~Mark Twain
The only thing worth stealing is a kiss from a sleeping child. ~Joe Houldsworth
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day. ~Friedrich Nietzsche
If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep. ~Dale Carnegie
No day is so bad it can’t be fixed with a nap. ~Carrie Snow
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth
There is more refreshment and stimulation in a nap, even of the briefest, than in all the alcohol ever distilled. ~Edward Lucas
People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one. ~Leo J. Burke
Life is something that happens when you can’t get to sleep. ~Fran Lebowitz
It’s a cruel season that makes you get ready for bed while it’s light out. ~Bill Watterson
The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late. ~Charles Caleb Colton
A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book. ~Irish Proverb
Life is too short to sleep on low thread-count sheets. ~Leah Stussy
Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience – unless they are still up. ~Ellen Goodman
Sleep… Oh! how I loathe those little slices of death. ~Author unknown, various wordings commonly attributed to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, and Journey to the Center of the Earth
And if tonight my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,
and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.
~D.H. Lawrence
May sleep envelop you as a bed sheet floating gently down, tickling your skin and removing every worry. Reminding you to consider only this moment. ~Jeb Dickerson, http://www.howtomatter.com
Consciousness: that annoying time between naps. ~Author Unknown
There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast. ~Author Unknown
Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking. ~Clifton Fadiman
Dawn: When men of reason go to bed. ~Ambrose Bierce
The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows. ~Gaston Bachelard
Sleep is perverse as human nature,
Sleep is perverse as legislature….
So people who go to bed to sleep
Must count French premiers or sheep,
And people who ought to arise from bed
Yawn and go back to sleep instead.
~Ogden Nash, Read This Vibrant Exposé
If people were meant to pop out of bed, we’d all sleep in toasters. ~Author unknown, attributed to Jim Davis
Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation. ~Author Unknown
Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed. ~Arthur Schopenhauer
A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky -
I’ve thought of all by turns, and still I lie
Sleepless…
~William Wordsworth, “To Sleep”
If a man had as many ideas during the day as he does when he has insomnia, he’d make a fortune. ~Griff Niblack
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow. ~Charlotte Brontë
[S]leep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. ~Thomas Dekker
People who snore always fall asleep first. ~Author Unknown
Without enough sleep, we all become tall two-year-olds. ~JoJo Jensen, Dirt Farmer Wisdom, 2002
When you have insomnia, you’re never really asleep, and you’re never really awake. ~From the movie Fight Club, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk
The best cure for insomnia is a Monday morning. ~Author Unknown
Now, blessings light on him that first invented sleep! It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap, and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man, even. ~Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, 1605
The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
POSTED BY: DR SHAHMURAD