The value of the written word
In the pro-corner:
Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - books: Jobs a goodun: In defence of wannabe novelists
Here is what I remember most about being an unpublished novelist - the humiliation, the way everyone thinks they have a right to sneer. You don’t survive the sneering unless you are wilfully, stubbornly ambitious.
In the anti-corner:
Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - books: Want to get rich quick? Dont try writing
Get a grip, people, either get on with it and write your book, at the weekend, after work, before work, during the vacation, or on a pitiful part-time income, or choose a proper way to get rich and famous.
I’ve not creatively written anything substantial since finishing my degree, which was what…six months ago. It has not given me confidence in my own words, which is what I hoped it would. So I don’t know about encouraging writing for writing sake.
Anyone can take a pot of paint and brush and call themselves an artist and maybe they are because they say they are. And maybe creative writers are writers because they say they are.
Is creative writing an exploration of the ‘what if’ and the inner landscape or is it what happens after it has been, written which is more important I think. When the writing connects the minds of two people - the writer and the reader - and something that is created that can’t be recreated in any moment but then. So writing something is only half of it.
If it’s not read it’s lifeless.
I have a shelf of lifeless books waiting to be read.
I have files in my computer of lifeless words.
I have poems that have no meaning to anyone but me.
But as much as I can not escape the act of writing. I can’t help feeling that I’m not a real writer until what I’ve written is read and loved.
Does this sound soppy and sentimental?
But the reality is that for now only a few people see what I’ve written and out of those I can’t be guaranteed that they like it. That’s the risk writing. It might read and hated. Does this make you bad writer or does it just mean you have to keep writing until you find the right words?
And when you do - will they be read and be worth anything?
