WARNING - The text in blue is a 'Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince' spoiler, and the red is a 'Wild Seed' spoiler, both fo which are very excellent books
.
Why do you write? What drives you to make these worlds in your head? Or to make characters in worlds you know of?
To me, writing isn't a jumble of words, it's the purest form of communication, a gateway to the soul. When I read Harry Potter, Hitchikers Guide To The Galaxy, Wild Seed et al. I'm not only reading a story, I feel as if part of me is touched by it, fulfiled by it, completed just that little bit more by it. I write so I can do this to others, so that I can sleep, eat, and live, knowing that someone somewhere - whether it's my mother in the next room, my sister in Bristol, or someone on the other side of the world, is touched by what I write.
My goal as a writer is to make people cry like J.K. Rowling did when she
killed off Dumbledore, to make people fall off their chairs in hysterics like Douglas Admas did when he had God disprove his own existance in a puff of logic, to make people question what they see as truths like Octavia Butler did when she revealed
Doro to be as much of victim of his abilities as others - because that is what they, and many others, have done to me.
This crosses over with what I am like online, why I am on this and other Forums and why I will likely never leave them for extended periods of times - my goal is to leave a mark on this world, a mark with my one sinsignificantly small life, and one that will last for an age.
However, this way of thinking has created a very large annoyance: Praise. I have a unique relationship with any kind of praise, a 'love/hate' relationship if you will. Sometimes I will see or hear praise and be spured on to write more, while at others I will slap myself and say 'don't get egotistical' - as if somewhere in my head a monkey is randomly pushing buttons just for a kick (as everyone knows we have monkey's sitting in our brains - the Simpsons said so
)..
In short:
I have long sat on the borders of Agnostism and Athiesm, believeing too much in science and fact to believe in a God, but a part of me always open-minded to the idea what there is
something that I don't understand somewhere, but if I had to choose a belief what would it be? If I had to decide on a religion which would I choose?
Well, writing would be my relgion - my God would be Douglas Adams, and my Messiahs would be Rowling, Tolkien, Butler and the many great authors of the world, and the only way to pay homage to my beliefs, my God and Messiahs is to pick up a pen and pour my heart and soul onto a piece of paper, in the hopes that somewhere, in this immeasurably vast world, someone is affected by this small insignificant person's words - as I hope I may have done with this post...
~MTWC