eowriter.com

Some novels take time to write. Just as one shouldn’t pan-fry brisket, sometimes one can’t hurry a novel that needs to be slow-cooked. Karl Marlantes, a Yale graduate and Rhodes Scholar, slow-cooked his powerful novel, Matterhorn, for 33 years. I’ll just keep writing, because, in my humble opinion, writers and artists tend to go until the piece is polished, finished and ready – brisket anyone?.

A neuroscientist has studied a phenomenon called internal monologues in some people's heads. It has also been found that there are individuals for whom there isn’t a voice at all, just silence. my narrators/inner voices can be like a TV screen, or a slide projector, that are continuously playing inside an attic, inside my head. It’s when I disagree with them that they stop talking to me. Wait, should I be worried that they’ll be mad at me for exposing our little spats? Nah, it was their suggestion that I write about my inner voices – them – see, now that’s a tad narcissistic I argue.

Like James Baldwin so perfectly said, I too, write in order to change the world, knowing that literature is indispensable to the world... The world changes according to the way people see it, and if I alter, even by a millimeter, the way... people look at reality, then I can change it. And, equally important, as a writer, if I have a message that I want or need to tell you, I'm impelled to create a great, impactful story in order to do so.