This first post is to set the ball rolling; since I have debated and re-thought about taking this first step. I promised a friend that I would start today, and if I went back on my word, I would stop believing in the things I promise.
I really want to write stories. You know, for some time now, in the recent past, I truly came to believe that reading fiction was a waste of time. "It's just like watching TV," I scoffed. I tried desperately to read non-fiction, practiced a superior smirk and pushed the glasses up my nose as I held a book that would impart me with higher knowledge.
But yeah, all I did was hold that book.
After a few desperate months, I started to read fiction again. I also joined a library. As I read book after book, I found hidden corners of my brain stirring to speak to me. What was it? My half-dead imagination, perhaps. The book I held felt right in my hands and I paused to think - Is fiction really fictitious?
I have never been able to conjure up a story out of thin air - it either happened to me or a friend of mine. Perhaps it was someone I had observed on the commute back home from work and I had paused to wonder what that woman standing on the terrace of the dirty house did. I have learnt more from works of fiction than I could from bundles of encyclopedias. Heidi walked around the Swiss alps with me when I was ten, for instance. When I said this to another friend, she said, 'Well, there are a lot of avenues to do that. There's the internet, for one.'
I am not entirely sure how to argue that one. But, perhaps, it is because you spend so much more time with a book than with a picture or a movie, that the book seeps into your bloodstream. There are movies that I have loved, but I cannot recall a snapshot from a movie with stunning clarity, the way I can with a book I have loved.
What separates a good story from great one? For a long time, I thought it was good language. But, now, I think it comes down to how much of the author's soul has been a part of the book. Did he/she really have a story to tell? Did they really want to?
One of my favourite writers is Khaled Housseini, simply because he knows how to tell a story. He transports the reader to an unknown places and unites him with the characters so seamlessly, you only know it when you are wiping the tears off your face. (Seriously. I am too scared to read 'And the mountains echoed')
He's my idol.
I re-read my old blog entries. I thought some of them were juvenile. Some, I thought were brilliant and I lamented if I could ever top it or if I had 'lost it'. I recalled my Dad say, 'if you stop writing, your passion will go away,' and I feared it had already happened to me.
http://zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-for-beginners/
I read this a few months ago, loved it, but didn't do anything about it. But it never quite left me. It gave me hope, that while I think that what I write is crappy (and I am right about it), it isn't a bad thing.
I will return, every Sunday, to tell a new story. And one day, make it to the last panel of that comic.
I really want to write stories. You know, for some time now, in the recent past, I truly came to believe that reading fiction was a waste of time. "It's just like watching TV," I scoffed. I tried desperately to read non-fiction, practiced a superior smirk and pushed the glasses up my nose as I held a book that would impart me with higher knowledge.
But yeah, all I did was hold that book.
After a few desperate months, I started to read fiction again. I also joined a library. As I read book after book, I found hidden corners of my brain stirring to speak to me. What was it? My half-dead imagination, perhaps. The book I held felt right in my hands and I paused to think - Is fiction really fictitious?
I have never been able to conjure up a story out of thin air - it either happened to me or a friend of mine. Perhaps it was someone I had observed on the commute back home from work and I had paused to wonder what that woman standing on the terrace of the dirty house did. I have learnt more from works of fiction than I could from bundles of encyclopedias. Heidi walked around the Swiss alps with me when I was ten, for instance. When I said this to another friend, she said, 'Well, there are a lot of avenues to do that. There's the internet, for one.'
I am not entirely sure how to argue that one. But, perhaps, it is because you spend so much more time with a book than with a picture or a movie, that the book seeps into your bloodstream. There are movies that I have loved, but I cannot recall a snapshot from a movie with stunning clarity, the way I can with a book I have loved.
What separates a good story from great one? For a long time, I thought it was good language. But, now, I think it comes down to how much of the author's soul has been a part of the book. Did he/she really have a story to tell? Did they really want to?
One of my favourite writers is Khaled Housseini, simply because he knows how to tell a story. He transports the reader to an unknown places and unites him with the characters so seamlessly, you only know it when you are wiping the tears off your face. (Seriously. I am too scared to read 'And the mountains echoed')
He's my idol.
I re-read my old blog entries. I thought some of them were juvenile. Some, I thought were brilliant and I lamented if I could ever top it or if I had 'lost it'. I recalled my Dad say, 'if you stop writing, your passion will go away,' and I feared it had already happened to me.
http://zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-for-beginners/
I read this a few months ago, loved it, but didn't do anything about it. But it never quite left me. It gave me hope, that while I think that what I write is crappy (and I am right about it), it isn't a bad thing.
I will return, every Sunday, to tell a new story. And one day, make it to the last panel of that comic.
