Something About Writers and Writing

Places have their aesthetics, or so to say their “vibe”. A writer is successful if he or she is successful in capturing that vibe in a written form. I deal with a lot of such vibes. I don't know about non-fiction writers but fiction writers should have a sense of aesthetics. Writing should have soul in it and that will only happen when the writer has a soul. Laymen who have not dealt with writing would not have any idea about the hell a writer goes through to preserve his or her soul. There is a lot of soulless writing these days, but what sells is what sells. I am old school as far as reading is concerned. I like writers with a soul and writers with a conscience. This is probably the reason why I like Kafka so much. Only modern writer I like is JK Rowling but then she also fell in the trap of the modern pronoun brigade and decided that Dumbledore is gay. I do not have any opinion on this though, it was her world and she can decide whatever happens in her world but I think writers should be above all this. I like reading fiction but these days writing fiction is difficult because the reality itself has become stranger than fiction. I think it always was but these days due to the internet, it is in your face. I am an escapist, I like to have relief from the so called real world because I don't like how the real world is handled by, well, whoever handles it. Reading was one of my escapes during childhood and it still is. One of my favourite genres is Science Fiction and within it, Philip K. Dick is one of my favourite authors. He was so sure about humanity that even in his space themed stories he wrote about colonization and war, never once thinking that probably if we become advanced enough we may become peaceful. I have my reasons to believe that he was right. One of my other favourites, Lovecraft, invented the genre of cosmic horror. According to him humanity is tiny and can be crushed any day by ancient cosmic deities. His writing style is gothic and I love gothic literature. His stories transport me in a whole different world, a world that I like.

I like many writers but the ones above are some of my absolute favourites. I like the world created by Jules Verne too, and I like stories of Chekhov, O. Henry, Guy de Maupassant and others. I used to write when I was in college. Earlier I used to write fiction because I wanted to become a writer and I wanted to make people feel my writing and to entertain them. Now I write to preserve aesthetics and to educate along with the above stated reasons. I have realised that a writer writes because he or she has no option other than that. For him or her it is survival. I can survive without writing, but I feel better when I write. Yes, there is always the risk of your writing not passing the test of time, or becoming irrelevant, or worse, becoming ridiculous as time passes, but then whatever you write, if it was your truth at the time, it doesn't matter if it looks ridiculous to others.

I have wanted to become a writer with all my heart, not a popular writer, not a money making writer, but just a very good writer. I am a physician, and during college, inspired by Chekhov, I moulded myself as a physician writer. I don't want to be a popular writer but the least I want to do is preserve the vibes I love, through my writing.