Tahir Shah at RolfPotts.com

This month at the RolfPotts.com Travel Writers page I interview Tahir Shah, who has authored ten books, including The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca, and In Search of King Solomon’s Mines. Here are some of the highlights from our Q&A:

• “Before I ever wrote a magazine article, I wrote a book. It was cobbled together of miscellaneous journeys I’d made in India, Africa and Latin America. It was originally entitled In Gondwanaland, and it sat on a shelf for four years. No publishers were interested when I sent the manuscript out directly. I tried to get an agent, but again, no one would take me on. So I got some letterhead printed and posed as my own agent. I’d call up publishers, put on funny voices, and rave about Tahir Shah’s debut book. Amazingly, I managed to create hype and, eventually, it was bought by a big publishing company. They published it under the title Beyond the Devil’s Teeth. It’s not the greatest book ever written, but it was a start.”
• “I’m not very organized, but I like to spend time really observing a culture, and allowing it to seep into my bones. Sometimes I take detailed notes. At other times I don’t even carry a notebook. You miss a lot of stuff if you’re scribbling it all down. It’s often better to relax, to open your eyes, and watch.”
• “When I am writing a book I have a clear method. I don’t deviate. I start only when I am ready to begin. I plan the book out roughly, get all the source material to hand, get a comfortable chair, a cushion, and write for four hours each day. No breaks. No excuses. If I write five hundred words an hour, that’s two thousand a day. It means I can knock out a book of 100,000 words in fifty days. At that pace there’s no bursting a gut over it. I don’t have any time for people who groan about how hard it is to write. To me, it means they’re lazy, that they are lacking the key ingredient for any self-employed person: self discipline.”
• “If I have any advice at all, it is to only write what you are deeply interested in, and to enjoy everything you do. Strive to have an interesting life. I have so many friends whose agents from time to time get them big solid book deals for projects they are less than enthusiastic about, and most of them are resounding flops. The other advice is not to let your ego swell to the size of a skyscraper. Travel writing isn’t rocket science. It’s a complete joy and, sometimes, if done right, it can border on a work of art. But it’s just writing.”

Full Tahir Shah interview online here.