Being A Writer Is Not

Like Many Of My Friends In The Pakistani Diaspora - And Many Of My Friends In Pakistan Itself, For That Matter - I Have Sometimes Looked At The Country Of My Birth And Wondered Whether Its Future Will Be One Of Steady And Sad Decline.

I Really Do Believe That People Surprise You. And One Of The Powerful Things About Novels Is That They're About Characters, And Those Characters Live Their Lives.

I Think That Things Were Getting Really Very Bad A Couple Of Years Ago, And There's Been A Very Significant Change In Response To That On The Part Of The Security Forces And The Government, But Particularly The Army. And You See Pakistan Actually Fighting Terrorism And Terrorists In A Much More Wholehearted Way Than Had Been Occurring Previously. It's Not Anywhere Close To Over Yet, But You've Seen A Big Change In The Antiterrorism Campaign Here.

When I'm Really Plugged In I Find It Difficult To Write. It's Like Digging A Well. If You Make A Void, Something Moves In To Fill It. Writing Books Is Like That. It's Mostly About Freeing Up Time, Doing Nothing, And In That Time Some Writing Starts To Happen. We Need To Figure Out How To Maintain Those Voids.

I Like The Idea Of An Open, International London That Thrives On Attracting Hard-working, Talented People But Has The Confidence To Tell Them They Must Play By The Same Rules As Everyone Else.