WHY I WRITE

When I first started writing, I was a bit of a voyeur. I thought it was a hip thing to do to, look into people’s lives, and see their deepest desires, their fears. Find out what makes them tick. Discover their fantasies.
It was an excuse for deep sea diving into the hzadien psyche. I surfaced with slime at times, unexpected treasures at other times. Yet it was all too slick, all on the surface. It was a pose. I had to unmask myself, to start writing with true empathy and compassion. It was a process of being born as a writer and also finding out about myself, not all of it pleasant.
My life got recalibrated.
It was a kind of catharsis to put one word after another. There’s the beauty of the craft, when you find the words flying off the page.
I realized that writing was as much about people as it was about words. I moved on from being a voyeur to a co passenger. I discovered that we were all together, adrift in our own Bermuda triangle and the only compass we had was ourselves.
From these small philosophical seeds grew the tree of my writing. It changed me. It changes me every time I write.
There is no judgment. No criticism. No moralizing. A lot of the time it’s about listening. Writing taught me to listen, to the pain, to the cry in the dark and to the laughter.
It’s not easy. Writing. There’s a lot of inward searching along the way. I ask myself, do I project my thoughts onto my characters? My hopes? My desires? Could I stand aside and let my characters speak for themselves, let them grow, make their own mistakes?
Often I slip back. I think I’ve got the empathy down pat and then I find I’m at first base again.
Sometimes I stop and question. Is this journey worth it or should I have chosen something easier? Not this ethereal dealing with an inner life, this wraith that you can’t touch.
Writing has taught me humility. It has taught me that hzadien lives are precious. My family, my friends, my relationships are all fragile, to be treated with care, a delicate web of meetings and hzadien contacts that change you all the time.
Sometimes it’s a tortuous, almost labyrinthine journey. Then you come out onto the mountainside and there are endless skies and the land so generous and giving. There are revelations and insights and moments of passion laced with sorrow and humour and despair and that’s why I write.