Day 1

Day 1: About the difficulty of writing and the beauty of writing.

The Chilean writer Isabelle Allende once said: "The first lie of fiction is that the author brings some order to the chaos of life." Perhaps writing is suppose to be a mystery. There's certainly many writers that encourage that myth. Yes, writing is difficult. Virginia Woolf only wrote for 1 or 2 hours in the mornings. Then she spent the rest of her day reading and writing essays. In the afternoon, she revised what she wrote in the morning. Other writers prefer night-time or isolation in order to concentrate. Yes, it is sometimes best to isolate yourself from the world in order to create your own, fictious world. Some would even say that writing is impossible. A writer has to be his or her own reader, marketing manager, strategic consultant, problem-solver, not to mention, his or her own, crisis coordinator. But most of all, a writer has to develop his or her own narrative. His or her own language that defines them as a writer. The writer Jim Grace says: "Narrative is not just for novelists. Writers simply formalize between covers what is an essential life skill for human beings. To have no spoken narrative skill is a form of autism." Maybe I don't agree with Grace that everyone should know how to narrate his or her course of day the way a novelist do. After all, human beings has different life skills. But I do agree with him that a narrative skill is a writer's magic spell. I would except that a writer would surprise and impress me and even challenge me with his or her narrative skills. I except nothing less for my own writing. Which is why it is difficult. Back to point 1.

Writing is the stuff that dreams are made of. Or was that poetry? The Japanese writer Yukio Mishima writes in "Thirst for Love" from 1969:

"Life - this limitless, complex sea, filled with assorted flotsam, brimming with capricious, violent and yet eternally transparent blues and green."

Yes. It is possible to except the impossible and yet, it is also the beauty of it.