What Writers Want

Writers are not just silent observers. We choose to become the voice for others but today I am writing for ‘us’.

"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect."

--Anaïs Nin

We want acceptance

Professionals, whether postmen, builders, doctors or engineers, are recognized for their work on a daily basis. They are respected for what they do but writers must make a breakthrough before they are even acknowledged as working members of society.

We sit, and we dream, but all these thoughts are just the start to a wonderful story, something that might touch your heart, make you smile, get you thinking or even change your future.

No one remembers who created the first ripple for change, but I want you to know anything that produces change was once just a thought and someone worked on their thoughts and presented them to the world.

“If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.”

― Martin Luther

In our thoughts, we fight for injustice, racism, environmental change and much more. Whether it is through fiction or non-fiction, writers shape generations and they should be recognized for doing so.

Remember we work differently

The next time you see me lost in my thoughts I want you to know I am working. I am creating ideas, I am organizing stuff and I will have to do this several times before I get to put them down on the paper.

“A writer is working when he’s staring out of the window.”

— Burton Rascoe

Our work can be urgent

When I wake up in the middle of the night to write, I want you to know it was something important and couldn’t wait till the morning. It is something like the emergency call if I don’t attend to it, everything will be lost in the morning.

"You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write."

--Saul Bellow

Leave us alone with the crowd of our thoughts

As a writer, there are times when I want to be left alone with the crowd of my thoughts. Don’t think of me as a loner. I am an inventor, inventing thoughts, and ideas.

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."

--Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

I am best at my work when I am by myself because I have hundreds of observations and I need time to filter out the relevant stuff.

Never compare watching a movie with reading a book

I want our future generations to be encouraged to read and write. Reading and writing were the first steps toward civilization so we shouldn’t take our letters back to images.

Reading sparks are our own imagination whereas we watch what someone else imagined.

We want constructive criticism

Before I write anything, I weigh it a hundred times. I want you to read it I want you to weigh it. I want your constructive criticism because that will only come when you think about it.

"A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time--proof that humans can work magic."

― Carl Sagan

In the end, we want you to know, it is not easy

When I write I pour my heart out to you. I feel every word I write. If you shed a tear while reading my story, know that I have shed many more writing it.

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

― Ernest Hemingway