Sunday, June 20, 2010

why write?

This is from an interview over at Editorial Anonymous http://editorialanoymous.blogspot.com. If you’ve never looked at this blog, you should. This anonymous editor has some interesting things to say about the business of publishing and writing. Sometimes she has interviews. She had one recently with Adam Rex whose new YA novel—coming out this summer—is titled FAT VAMPIRE. I haven’t read it yet, but it sounds great.

Anyway, towards the end of the interview, E.A. asks him if he has any advice for writers or vampires. He responds:

ADAM REX: “There's a joke in there somewhere: What's the difference between a writer and a vampire? One of them leads a pallid, lonely existence, sucking dry both loved ones and strangers alike in his ghoulish quest for immortality, and the other one is a vampire. Ha ha.”

Uncomfortable twinge, right?

Why do we want to be writers at all? What drives us to do what we do? It’s different for everyone, I guess. I love the process, the making of a story, but sometimes I think it’s a ridiculous way to live: sitting around making up stories while life goes on all around me. But, for me, making up stories is one way that I do live. It’s one of the things that makes me feel alive. So, I say, suck away.

6 comments:

Andrea Mack said...

Brian, I sometimes feel like life is passing by while I'm trapped by my writing, but I prefer to think of writing as enriching the life I'm already living.

Actually, I used to sit for hours at my computer, but I've found that I do my best writing in the first couple of hours. Anything after that is mostly killing time, so I step away and go do some "real life" stuff (like my day job).

Brian Yansky said...

Andrea--yeah, that's right for me--sometimes I feel a little trapped by it. I could be doing instead of imagining. More times I feel freed by it though. I get to live a lot of different lives in my fiction. And imagining may be a form of doing?

Elisabeth Black said...

I am inspired to write a blog post about this. Deep Thots have come to me.

Brian Yansky said...

Deep Thots are always good.

Donna said...

Great post, Brian.
Somewhere deep in your thoughtful post is the question of whether writers are tortured souls. You know, that maybe a deep pain or emotional period in our youths somehow molded us as child-lit writers? Is there is a psychologist in the house?

Brian Yansky said...

Maybe writing is our form of therapy, Donna.