A writer needs a certain emotional edge, a certain neutral temperament, to be able to put ink to paper and extract from the depths of his mind words which form a cohesive nest of truth and concurrent magic.
He must be able to plant a seed of curiosity and imagination in the mind of the reader, because no writing can be called great unless it inspires a storm of aftershocks, so to speak. I would personally consider it my greatest triumph if I am successful in creating an aura of mystery about myself and leaving my readers wondering if my work stems from a pool of actual life-experiences or whether it is from an imaginative blitzkrieg that possessed me one fine afternoon.
The whole idea is to leave a lasting impression on the world, and to allow yourself to live on beyond your physical lifespan through your ideas and creativity.
The best writing is borne in the most unexpected moments and venues, taking shape in either the blink of an eye or at a glacial pace designed to test the writer's patience. It is an immensely lonely journey, and no matter how happy you are and how solid your support system is, writing a novel is a solitary journey and no one else can tread on this tortuous path with you. There are mood swings which engulf your very being and leave those closest to you wondering what suddenly ticked you off; because they cannot fathom the toll it takes on you when you must murder a character in your book or have your protagonist sign his own divorce papers. They haven't read your book yet, and that in itself is a scary thought: what if no one else ever feels as passionately about these characters as you do? What if you give up, midway through your writing, deciding that this is a ridiculously silly idea that no one shall ever deem worthy enough to publish, let alone buy at a bookstore? What if your finished product ends up carrying pretentious writing that you yourself would have hated to read?
These are the demons that occupy a very dark, very important corner of every writer's cluttered mind, and I suppose there is no release from these shackles unless the writing has been done, the work has been bound into a shiny new paperback and delivered to the readers.
I live my life in the hope that one day, there will be men and women who choose to stay home off their own volition on a Friday night, curled up in bed with my book for company; there will be people who will sit by themselves in cafes on sunny Sunday mornings with their cups of beautiful black coffee and my book in their hands.
These are my dreams, and I am certain they are congruent with those of millions of others like me who have devoted their lives to the written word.
He must be able to plant a seed of curiosity and imagination in the mind of the reader, because no writing can be called great unless it inspires a storm of aftershocks, so to speak. I would personally consider it my greatest triumph if I am successful in creating an aura of mystery about myself and leaving my readers wondering if my work stems from a pool of actual life-experiences or whether it is from an imaginative blitzkrieg that possessed me one fine afternoon.
The whole idea is to leave a lasting impression on the world, and to allow yourself to live on beyond your physical lifespan through your ideas and creativity.
The best writing is borne in the most unexpected moments and venues, taking shape in either the blink of an eye or at a glacial pace designed to test the writer's patience. It is an immensely lonely journey, and no matter how happy you are and how solid your support system is, writing a novel is a solitary journey and no one else can tread on this tortuous path with you. There are mood swings which engulf your very being and leave those closest to you wondering what suddenly ticked you off; because they cannot fathom the toll it takes on you when you must murder a character in your book or have your protagonist sign his own divorce papers. They haven't read your book yet, and that in itself is a scary thought: what if no one else ever feels as passionately about these characters as you do? What if you give up, midway through your writing, deciding that this is a ridiculously silly idea that no one shall ever deem worthy enough to publish, let alone buy at a bookstore? What if your finished product ends up carrying pretentious writing that you yourself would have hated to read?
These are the demons that occupy a very dark, very important corner of every writer's cluttered mind, and I suppose there is no release from these shackles unless the writing has been done, the work has been bound into a shiny new paperback and delivered to the readers.
I live my life in the hope that one day, there will be men and women who choose to stay home off their own volition on a Friday night, curled up in bed with my book for company; there will be people who will sit by themselves in cafes on sunny Sunday mornings with their cups of beautiful black coffee and my book in their hands.
These are my dreams, and I am certain they are congruent with those of millions of others like me who have devoted their lives to the written word.
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