on writing...

one of the good things here in the US is you can listen to the radio on the TV.. and as i believe in exciting as few of my senses as possible (to increase the focus on the one sense that is active), I love it.. and the minimalism too.. anyway, I am digressing.. i was listening the second interview in the last 2 months of this famous novelist called Jonathan Franzen..

an interesting character.. but some of the things he spoke about becoming a writer was very interesting and i hope to remember one day.. firstly, he says, you've got to practice writing for 10,000 hours before you can become a great writer.. that is writing full time for 5 years!! a quick count of how much I might have written told me that a 100 posts into 30 minutes, 50 hours of writing!!

50 hours, compared to the required 10,000 hours!! and then the next interesting thing he spoke about evaluating how to know if this is.. he says he tries re-read it the next day/month/year.. and if it is not interesting - it's not worthy of being published! i have a friend whose blog i visit very often.. and his writing is so fascinating that i never tire of it.. and that helped me understand what he meant about re-reading again and again and still being excited about it..

he also spoke about people who are socially isolated reading a lot.. which seemed to make sense to me.. i do feel isolated in some ways and that's probably why i read so much too.. on wiki page, he speaks about treating your reader as a friend.. not enemy, not a spectator.. which was interesting, because i already do that.. he also says to write in the third person which I could somehow never do.. so i going to try that.. when i listened to him, i realized how much i wanted to be a writer myself.. if only to let other confused people like me out there know that it's okay.. there are loads who think like you etc... let's see where this ambition goes..

m