Is your Love Blind?
On effective writing
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| Image Courtesy: Google |
What’s your best chance of surviving as a freelance writer? Before
answering this, let us tie this question up with the time and space in which we
live. In the present world, earning money from writing words is one of the most
difficult jobs. That is what makes at least some of us wish, if we could live
in the 19th century
when you didn’t have such competition.
Don’t click the corner button please; I know the reason why you
went through the first paragraph. The reason is the same as that which spurred
me to write these very words.
If you are a beginner, let me make myself clear—my intention is
not to put you off from your writing dream. On the other hand, I am trying to
address an issue, which due to its wild impact, remains unspoken-about in any
writing class or book or web page about writing.
In my opinion, the question of survival is not a negative one at
all. Just like a river that detours around any obstruction and finds for itself
a new shore and a whole lot of life forms along those shores, the concomitant
of being a writer is to find new paths and create new shores. If you understood
my stand about the question of survival, you would also have understood the
question being transformed into a sign, a sign that calls upon the need for a
vital detour.
Inevitably, a writer would be forced to choose or create a niche
for him or her under such concern for survival; what I mean is, being genre
specific. Most of them, dreaming about a literary grandeur, might want their
profiles full of academic writings, in which the writer proclaims his
independence from the readers. This style, which is jargonistic and dull, often
drives readers away from spending their money, especially for a new writer.
On the other hand, if the writer becomes reader specific, he or
she can find a space better accessible.
This detour also leads some writers to dedicate themselves in
areas where they are good at or they actually find their love in. This helps in
your maturation as a writer. For those who think popular literature or writings
that are made for the common people second grade writing, I have only one thing
to say, great books are never away from people and so are great writers.
However difficult the concurrent situation is, even if we all wish to be
Charles Dickens or Stephen King, the ultimate question is always the same; how committed are you to your
work?
Recently, one of my friends, an aspiring writer, emailed me a You
Tube video link, an interview of John Irving, in which Irving says if he were a
writer of 27 starting off his career NOW, he would have been tempted to shoot
himself.
I asked my friend dejected; what
are you planning to do with your life now?
He had a smile and said; I
posted this video on my Facebook wall and sent it to many debuting writers too.
It sure will thin out much of my competition!
He meant that the love for his craft is total and blind and that
he would never quit.
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