To live, to build, to write.

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember myself. I’m not quite sure, but I think I wrote my first sci-fi story when I was eight. I don’t remember what it was about, but I still remember the last phrase, which I thought was very cool at the time:

Slowly the wreckage of Phobos was flying away…

Damn, I still like it.

But despite the experience of almost a lifetime, I almost never published anything. What was stopping me? First of all, perfectionism.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to dump another load of the standard trivial motivational nonsense on you right now. Especially since I still haven’t properly published anything (unless you count a few translations from English into Russian, which I don’t count as my original writing job, of course).

I don’t have a complete answer as to why I have been writing almost exclusively for myself for so many years. My best guess is, perhaps, that I just wasn’t ready. A lot of stuff fits in this definition — some inner fears, perfectionism, and who knows what else.

Then at some point (in my thirties), I started writing poetry. At first, it was, frankly speaking, very dubious verses, but I was learning. The funny thing is that all my life before that, I was totally convinced that poetry wasn’t my thing and that it wasn’t even worth starting. And then I sort of bet with myself — well, it just can’t be that I couldn’t. How that turned out is not for me to judge. But people started listening to me and reading me…

Around the same time, I immersed myself in the ocean of the Internet, where you can publish anything, and this “anything” has always found readers — albeit few, but they were. Strangely enough, it was then that I realized that the main result does not necessarily must have monetary value for me.

I made my living as a worker. Okay, I have a rare and unusual specialization, but it still makes me a worker. I inspect and repair different things in hard-to-reach places where nobody but us rope access guys can reach. Often it happens on construction sites. Like, for example, right now.

Oddly enough, there are many similarities between writing and working on a construction site. Of course, it’s great when you get paid for your work. But for me, it is much more important to realize that I’m doing something useful.

I’m building an apartment building. Not alone, of course, all as it should be — the leading developer, subcontractors (like the company I work for), and work teams. And I’m glad to know that when we finish our job, people will live in this house, in which I have put my own effort, and they will feel nice and comfortable.

It’s the same with writing. It pleases me to know that someone will read my story, poem, novel, or article, and that reader will be interested to find out what happened to the characters in my story or learn about the good book I shared in the review.

A carpenter takes pieces of wood and uses his tools to make a table. This table looks entirely different from the trees that were its progenitors. The writer takes life and uses his imagination to create a story, which can also be very different from the source material. Still, it is only the writer’s life and experience in the core, as he has nothing else to build from.

The main thing is to tune and sharpen your tools properly and do everything with love.

And the good things will come.

After all, we are doing all this for fun, aren’t we?