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If one wants to write, one needs to begin by reading a lot: Zac O'Yeah

dna in association with Hachette India, one of India's leading publishing houses, announces the hunt for the next big name on the bestseller list.

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dna presents a unique opportunity for aspiring authors to exhibit their creativity and knack of storytelling. All creative stories tucked in notepads, inside closets and saved in secret folders in gadgets will now have a platform to bring them into the open. The stories will now meet the eyes of an interesting jury including reputed authors from Hachette. What’s more? The winning entry will be published by Hachette.

dna thus invites aspiring authors and interested writers to send in a detailed synopsis, along with three sample chapters or not less than 5000 words, of their work. Writing in any genre is welcome. The winning entry will be published and distributed by Hachette India and dna will track the entire the book upto its launch in 2014.

Zac O'Yeah worked in a theatre in Gothenburg, Sweden, and toured with a pop group until he retired early, at the age of 25, to come to India. He has since published eleven books in Swedish, in genres ranging from crime fiction to history and travelogue. He has also translated Indian fiction into Swedish. His English language debut, Once Upon a Time in Scandinavistan was published by Hachette India in 2010 which was followed by Mr Majestic: The Tout of Bengaluru in 2012.. He lives in Bangalore and is married to novelist Anjum Hassan. Find out more about him at www.zacoyeah.com

What got you interested in writing? What is your major source of inspiration?

Sometimes I have this feeling that writers are born, not made. At least in my own case, ever since I was a child I loved hearing stories and telling stories, and making up my own stories. The detective story, or the thriller, is one of the most ancient forms of storytelling, and also one of the most efficient stories - it has got excitement, emotion, revelations, everything that makes a story good. Long before Sherlock Holmes, the ancient Greek drama Oedipus Rex by Sophocles was a kind of detective story with several amazing plot twists. Shakespeare's Hamlet is another early detective story - with murders, madness, mysteries. I am inspired by this idea that as a writer of thrillers and detective stories, one contributes to such an old tradition. And the fact that the tradition is so old suggests to me that thrills is something that people will always love and need.

Which book are you reading right now? Can you suggest a couple of good books you've read lately?

Right now I've been reading One Night Stands and Lost Weekends, a collection of very early stories by the bestselling American mystery writer Lawrence Block. It is very instructive reading, because they've even found his debut story and reprinted it here, so readers can follow the early trajectory of a writer who went on to become one of the biggest sellers. He started by writing pulp but is nowadays a rather respected novelist, so much that Wong Kar-Wai asked him to work on the screenplay of his film My Blueberry Nights.  Another interesting book to have a look at is "The Tower of Silence", a rediscovered early Indian thriller written by Phiroshaw Jamsetjee Chaiwala in the 1920s. I'd also like to mention Behind the Silicon Mask by Eshwar Sundaresan, perhaps the best thriller debut of this year - certainly one of the better books I've read in a long time. Then I'm also reading Mukul Deva's latest thriller, The Dust Will Never Settle, and there's something unputdownable about his way of writing.

Do you have a particular routine when you write? What sets you apart as a writer?

I have the usual routine that most professional writers follow. Getting up as early as one can, sometimes even at 6am, first I drink a pot of strong coffee - I source mine directly from Coorg and get it freshly ground - and then start writing. Morning is a good time to write because the mind is uncluttered. Try to avoid looking at the Internet or answer emails until afternoon. In the late afternoon one should take a long walk and think about what one has written that day, come up with better ideas for the next day. I try to avoid writing late into the night, but it does happen that one has to sit up until 2am when one is working against a tight deadline. I'm not sure if anything of this sets me apart as a writer, but I try to be as dedicated and serious about the craft as I can. 

Who is your favourite author, what is it that really strikes you about their work?

I have lots of favourite writers so it feels a bit tricky to single out any one in particular - but the ones that I love reading are writers like Amitav Ghosh and Vikram Chandra and James Ellroy and Elmore Leonard and Johan Theorin and Kjell Eriksson, and so on, but perhaps the two most important influences were Graham Greene and RK Narayan. I never met Greene, but I did once get a chance to spend a few hours with Narayan. I think all my favourite writers are people who have evolved distinct writing styles, and they have also managed with the very difficult task of writing high quality serious literature which at the same time becomes popular and sells a lot of copies. I think it is important that books sell many copies, it is a gauge for how important reading is to people - I mean, that there are actually lots of people out there buying books, collecting them, loving them. If it wasn't for them, there wouldn't be any literature. 

Who do you think is India's greatest living writer, and why?

Among fiction writers it is without doubt Amitav Ghosh, and it is simple to see that ever since his first novel he has had this grand project of highlighting interesting moments in history, and bringing to our awareness many stories that may otherwise have been forgotten by us. He has also written one of the best Indian detective stories, an awesome novel called The Calcutta Chromosome which manages to combine a mystery story with science-fiction and historical research and Gothic horror.

What challenges did you face when breaking into the field? Do those challenges go away when you publish your first novel? 

It is difficult to get one's first book published, but I was so lucky that a publishing company actually contacted me, after having heard of some of my ideas, and asked me if I would like to publish with them. Then I wrote my first book. And that's the kind of luck I've been having: almost all my books have found publishers even before I have written them, usually based on the fact that there's an unusual, original concept behind the story. But the greater challenge is to keep up the quality in one's work, to avoid taking shortcuts, and I try to ensure that each new book I write is better than any of the previous ones. And with time it becomes harder and harder to outdo oneself. But then again, if one didn't try to do that, I think there'd be very little point going on writing.

What do you think of Indian writing at present and particularly the fact that practically anybody is writing a book these days. 

It is good sign that so many want to be writers. I occasionally teach creative writing workshops, how to write suspense fiction, and get to meet lots of people who want to start to write, or become better writers. So I've noticed that there is a great urge to tell stories. All of these writers may not necessarily become successful, because after all there can be only so many books published in any given year, but the more writers there are out there trying to improve their writing, the greater the chance that we find better and better books in our bookshops. It is a simple statistical fact. According to established publishing theory, a certain amount of bad and crappy books will have to be written and sometimes even published, for the gems to be discovered. And now and then major new talents surface, such as Eshwar Sundaresan who published Behind the Silicon Mask earlier this year.

Would you want any of your books adapted into films: If yes, by whom and who would you want as actors?

Of course, I'd love to see all of them as films. There has been, for some time now, a film company planning a movie version of my futuristic thriller Once Upon a Time in Scandinavistan but film work seems to be very slow work. I think Mr Majestic might make a perfect movie, too, as it is a thriller about films, in some way - it is definitely inspired by Bollywood and Sandalwood movies. It would be lovely to have somebody like Reema Kagti, who directed Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd and who appears to have a quirky sense of humour, to direct it. Another director I'd love to work with is Nagesh Kukunoor, I really love his very personal way of making movies. A third favourite director of mine is Upendra, who is one of the biggest stars of Kannada cinema: he both writes, directs and acts in his own films, and whenever I watch any of his films I'm completely stunned for a long time afterwards. As for casting, I'd rather leave that to the director, though I would love to have Urmila Matondkar act in a film based on any of my novels. And Rajnikanth, of course, and Vijay Raaz, and not to forget Arfi Lamba. 

What do you think about our initiative 'dna next best seller'? What are looking for in the next bestseller?

Ideally a perfect bestseller should look like my novels: funny, thrilling, occasionally bizarre and with a slightly sad love story. But since all books can't be alike, I think that a budding writer should try to come up with an original idea. The best way to do this is to think through the areas where one is an expert and then take a look in the bookshops to see if anybody else has already written something like that. If there is a particular kind of book missing out there, then that is the book one should try to write. Say if you are trained in finance or banking, then maybe you should write a novel about some really crazy economical frauds. Or if you're a bus driver, or an engineer who designs buses, then write a thriller about a bus hijacking or picking pockets on public transport. Perhaps. 

Can you give the budding writers out there some words of advice on writing and breaking into the field?

First of all, if one wants to write, one needs to begin by reading a lot: I'm sometimes a bit shocked when people ask me for advice on how to write a novel and then it turns out they've never even read a novel. Or if they have, they may have read just a handful. And sometimes they even confide in me and say that they don't particularly like novels. If one isn't a good reader, it is almost impossible to become a good writer. 

Secondly, before one begins to write a book one needs to come up with good ideas. I usually try to collect a number of ideas and then I see how to fit them together in a plot that will have some surprising twists and interesting turns. So what I'm saying is that it is a bad idea to just open a blank word document in one's computer and hope for the best. The better writers are always prepared when they start writing. 

Thirdly, it is good to have the right software. Some writers I know, such as Amitav Ghosh, still write their books by hand, with a pen, on paper. That's an amazing way of doing it. But I myself, and other writers like Vikram Chandra for example, are more into making the best use of the computer. I find that a writing software such as yWriter (and which can be downloaded for free from the website of the American writer Simon Haynes who created it, at spacejock.com) is helpful in organizing ideas and keeping track of the structure of the novel. After all, novels are very complex things and it is easy to loose one's track.

And the fourth thing is that one needs to have lots of patience. It is important to let the book take its time: if it takes three years and ten rewrites, then so be it. One should never send half-baked manuscripts to publishers, they'll just reject them, but give it your best shot, always. And if the first publisher rejects it, one should go on sending it to as many publishers that it takes. The people who give up too easily can never become successful writers. 

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