Is your Love Blind?

On effective writing

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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 19^th 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.