The Lord was in town

Yes, he was!

Lord Jeffery Archer met fans and followers at Landmark, Nungambakkam on 11th May 2009 at 7 pm. Chennai was the first stop of the 5 city India tour of his book release “Paths of Glory”. The evening started with the Man outlining the tale of the book. He went to share the story behind the story and the entire behind-the-scenes effort that went into bringing out Paths of Glory.

This was followed by a short story that he shared from his upcoming collection of short stories "And thereby hangs a tale". Questions and Answers were next. Like only Chennai can do it, the well read audience came out with some fabulous questions. Lord Jeff provided valuable insights into what goes into writing a book. For instance, Paths of Glory is a 140,000 words novel. It was completed in 1000 hours and it took him reviewing 17 drafts before the publishers snatched it away from him. Archer’s writing routine goes like this – he writes during the following time slots in a day: 6 am to 8 am; 8 to 10; 12 noon to 2 pm; 4-6 and 8 to 10 pm. It takes close to a year before the book can hit the shelves. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t suffer from Writer’s bloc. Sometimes, it just takes fours days of walking to get the plot right. Like with playing a violin, painting and dancing, he believes that writing a book is a God given talent too. He rarely knows the ending of a novel when he begins writing one. “The story takes its own course along the way, and the writer must follow that. One should never stick to a rigid structure”, he said.

His favorite writer is R.K. Narayan who he believes had the double bonus of being able to tell a good story in an excellent way. Most other writers write observations, he remarked. A good story necessarily has a good beginning, a middle and all of this leading up to an ending.

The evening concluded with a long round of book signing. He’s promised to be back in India next year.

You can catch up with Lord Jeffery Archer on his blog:
http://www.jeffreyarchers.blogspot.com/