Sunday, June 20, 2010

Why I write

I haven't been too active here, mainly because I spend most of my time writing/reporting for the weekly newspaper, The Hamilton County Express, and because the balance of my time is spent working on my novels or going on a hike in Hamilton County.
When I do blog here, it's usually on something topical that has caught my interest. Those who have read the few blogs I have posted, should know by now I like say things, sometimes crazy off the wall things, just to get people to think about things in a different way. This I will continue to do.
But what I would now like to do more of is to write about why I write and what I think about writing.
Let me start by saying I call myself a writer, not a journalist or an author.
First let me say why I don't like to call myself an author. To me, author is a past tense word. You could write just one book and forever call yourself an author. I hope I never reach the day, at least until I'm dead, when I plan never to write another book. Therefore, I prefer to call myself a writer.
When it comes to the word journalist, the problem I have with it is it strikes me as being a bit presumptuous to call oneself a journalist. I report. I write a report of the meetings and events I cover. Therefore, I am a reporter. I do my best to inform without taking sides. I try to be as objective as possible.
I think that's enough said for now except to add one thought.
In my vampire novels there is a fair amount of nudity and explicit sex. In these books I'm doing or trying to do what I said earlier about trying to get people to think about things they might not want to think about. But there is a sub-theme here too.
As my main vampire character is a nude/stripper dancer in a topless club, so too, I believe, is anyone who writes fiction. What I mean is - every writer of fiction is doing a bit of a strip tease. They use different characters to do a dance of the Seven Veils to both hide and expose themselves. Sometimes this is done intentionally. Sometimes it takes place accidentally. You know the phrase "There but for the grace of God." I believe this is true for all of us. All of us have within us the ability to do what we think we could never do, both the good and the bad. We can be more or less than we think we are. We are the other and the other is us.
It is the other which attracts us to read fiction or watch a movie. We want to see what the other is like, even if we are horrified by the other. We want to know what makes them tick.
More on this later.

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