Typing away your day…

I imagine many writers dream about a life dedicated to writing. No need to be somewhere at a particular time because you can write anywhere, at home, in cafes.

“In normal times, they tap away in their ‘offices’ at Starbucks, thanking their lucky stars for the book contracts that allowed them to give up their day jobs. But in recent months a cry has gone out for fiction writers to get up from behind their laptops and get back to work, real work — or at least to start writing about it again.”

– Jennifer Schuessler, “Take this job and write it,” The New York Times Sunday Book Review (March 14, 2010)

Of course it’s nice to spend your day doing whatever you want. But let’s not forget that novelists usually don’t just write some stories by using imagination. Their stories are often a reflection of society, however hidden an elusive it is. Good novels are usually somehow related to the current society.

So, in order to know something about the society you write about, even if your character live on, say, a planet like Pandora, you need to immerse yourself in it. If you wanna write about life, you need to live it first!

Tags: fiction, Literature, New York Times, writing