Every
time staring at the blank page on the screen or
playing with a pencil with my fingers, I think of it. I think of the
best writing tip I’ve received in my life. It came one usual
summer day, from my best friend. Or as my ex-husband could possibly
say ‘temporary best friend’ as he was certain that women
make friends with only those people
they work or study with and forget them the next day after they quit
the job or graduate the university. That is true sometimes, I
suppose, but definitely not in that case when your best friend is a
42-year-old bald father of four, former soldier, holder of degree in
religious studies, once widowed and once divorced, who still has
courage to laugh his lungs out over absurd jokes and storiesfromthe
old army days. The one, who is trying his best to gush onto paper
with fiction about forgotten Jewish villages, unknown Nepali beliefs,
great Roman architecture, which he has never actually seen and Jesus
wandering among all of them struggling to find the power to save all
of us for the sake of
good, being the biggest sacrifice ever made.
If
there is anyone in the world worth listening to, it’s
definitely him. One of those who is mostly silent, not because there
is nothing to say, but seldom those who hear while listening. He is
the one I view as the person who made me stay on the road, inspiring
me at the times when I needed most and making me smile when the world
was trying to chew me up and spit me out. Yeah, that is definitely
right guy, the short man from the star-striped country, who always
buys KFC sets, but never eats French fries, who let our coworker live
with him for half a year without paying bills and whose most
beautiful daughter works as a firefighter. That guy.
We
were working together for almost a year at that time when I already
became desperate as a writer going through the crisis. Being so far
from homes, me from my developing country and him from his favorite
one, every day after lunch we went outside for a smoke and a talk
over a can of Coke or a red-bean ice-cream cone.Summer
days were too hot to become better after ice-cream or drinks, but
conversations helped the time to fly faster
and made us talk about things that matter.
In
between the conversations on why our supervisor doesn’t want to
accept the fact that Australia is a separate continent and why such a
big country as China does not have pigeons, we shared ideas on latest
writing competitions and recent publishing opportunities as well as
discussing all of those inspirational articles from best-selling
writers on why and how you should write. Another huge bulk of time we
were dreaming and telling each other about the things we were going
to do after our China-period finishes. Usually those dreams involved
plenty of good beefsteaks, trips to somewhere in Indonesia, a lot of
nice sleep and the whole time of the world spent with our families
that we got used to see only through the screen during the video
calls for the past half year. And then, we started talking on writing
again, all over and over, until the lunch break was finished. Probably,
everyone who at least once sat in front of the typewriter or a
computer attempting to make their confused thoughts in a crowned
sentence or bright idea, and failed, was tempted to start reading
those articles on how
to write that became the major topic in our conversations.
Some
of those articles advise you to stop waiting as it makes you a waiter
and not a writer, while others tell you to sit and wait for your muse
to come if you have to and to start doing something else if it does
not come for a long time. Or listen to your heart and your inner
voice until needed thoughts burst out of you, despite of anything
else, smashing everything on their way, coming out from your heart,
your guts, your mind like a hurricane, making you lose your mind and
your job and your family if they stand in the way.All
of those hurricanes never reached me and were never born where I
could feel them, moreover that sun burning inside of me started
slowly fading away after the tons of rejection letters that were
burying it under their heaviness. Those motivational articles and
quotes never worked for me.
The
best advice on writing I’ve ever received came from him. That
same man who was beaten by life, betrayed by his wife, cheated by his
country and who was still capable of creating beautiful things, - the
one, who
was saved by writing. The
best writing tip I’ve ever got was very laconic. It was shining
among the dozens of how-to-write speeches of those who call
themselves writers, of those whose creations are gathering dust on
the shelves of the bookstores where people never want to buy them.
The
best advice on writing I’ve ever received went out to one word
only: Write. Despite being judged, mocked, unread, unpublished,
criticized, rejected, - Write. It does not matter if you have to lose
your job, your home, your friends, your money, your time or your
youth for the sake of it, if you feel like writing - Write. If you do
not feel like writing, but you have something in your mind, in your
soul, in your heart or your guts that is burning you from inside and
is attempting to make itself free just you do not know yet how -
Write. Even if you feel like your common sense and the whole time of
the universe is slipping between your fingers when you bleed onto
paper - Write. Write and never stop. Write and do not stop if it
stops you from everything else. Write and do not stop until it stops
in you.
Contact
Yuliia (Unless
you
type
the
author's name in
the subject
line
of the message we
won't know where to send it.)
