I thought for a long while about doing this entry, even though my blog is supposed to be a force for good and also mostly for me to review books objectively. After all, I learnt that negative content doesn’t do well on the internet back when I was a content aggregator (a job that I wasn’t proud of but I’ll get into that next time). But after publishing my book, people had many reactions to it. Some of them left me regretting that they knew about the book because they said some pretty ignorant things, to which I was too stunned to answer. Of course, all of them will remain anonymous and I shall not shame them (neither do I want you, dear reader, to go and shame them) because that is not the point of this post. The point is for me to educate people because they made some assumptions about writers and writing when they talked to me. Here are some of the things that they said to me.
- If I had the time, I would write a book and submit it, too.
No one has enough time. No one. Some people may have more time than others because they have a very supportive spouse who supports them financially, or they were born with a silver spoon in their mouths that enables them to not have a job and write. But most of us struggle. Some of my writer friends are mothers and have day jobs, but they find time to write. Most of us have to carve out time to write. Sometimes, life gets in the way. We get sick. We get mental health crises. People close to us, family and friends, need our help. So no, no one has the time to write and sometimes that book we want to finish stays in the drawer for a long time. However, we make time to write our hopefully best work. And we try to submit what we can.
- Writing a book is like writing one very long composition. Isn’t it?
While there are similar techniques that students have to use when writing their compositions, writing a book is not a long composition. Compositions are timed tests that require students to write a story that fits the question and to use a picture. In other words, even if you wrote a potentially best-selling story but didn’t answer the question or uses the picture, you will fail. The education system wants to see if children have acquired certain language skills and can follow instructions. That’s all. Writing a story that is true to yourself is different. You get complete freedom. You can write about anything, and whatever happens in the story is yours to imagine. So no, writing a book or a short story isn’t a very long composition.
- I just read the book, what do you mean by X/why did you write it this way?
I dislike it when I’m introduced as an author and that person makes it a point to read a book and ask me questions thereafter. Never mind the fact that they don’t know of the concept that’s called the “Death of the Author”, but I like my stories to be open to interpretation and I like seeing what people get out of each and every story. The fun in writing and storytelling is about having people react. If they like the story, that’s great. If they don’t like it, well, then that’s too bad. But I dislike explaining and telling people what I was thinking of when I was writing because it defeats the purpose of reading the book and drawing one’s own conclusions.
- Is everything in the book about your life?
Some people think that everything I write is autobiographical. That’s not true. Lots of incidents and the setting of the book (as well as some of my other work) have some parts of my personal life thrown in, but it’s not an exact copy of what happened in my life. In the same vein, the main characters are not me. They do things that I wouldn’t approve of, because that’s how storytelling and setting up a conflict is supposed to be. Not everything I write is about my own life and my work is better because of that.
- I read only one chapter.
Um, ok? Your reading habits are yours. As a writer, I honestly don’t feel the need to monitor everyone who reads the book. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That’s it for now. I wish that these people hadn’t said these things to me, but I guess having a blog helps to clear up these assumptions that people have about writers and writing. I hope this enlightens people a little. Many people think that wriiters hole up in their room and a book magically comes out, but a lot of hard work and scheduling to make time to write goes into it.