They say that artists have a need to express themselves. For me, it is not that. I don’t believe I have anything world-shattering to share with the world. My desire to write stems from a need to create, to make something, which I hope will give others pleasure or at least food for thought. I have never been content to be a mere observer, a passive recipient of what is available to me, be it a book, a film, a piece of art or music or simply a good joke. I want to be part of the creative process. I see a piece of art and think of all the things I would like to paint. I hear a piece of music and wish I could play a musical instrument.
It is not for the fame or the acclaim either; having my picture in Hello or being accosted in the street for a selfie or an autograph. In fact, I would hate that. I enjoy my privacy and relative obscurity. I am embarrassed when someone greets me with glee in the street and says, ‘I saw you on TV.’ On the other hand, I feel differently when someone tells me they enjoyed one of my books, stories or poems, because the demands made on a writer are great, from the initial inspiration to the endless editing.
So, why do I write? The answer, as you have probably gathered, is not to express myself but for the pleasure of creating something that I, and hopefully others, will read and, through the plot and characters, experience the multifarious emotions evoked by the words I have put together. There was a time when I just wrote, not sharing my writing with anyone other than a kind relative or friend. Then, one day I realized I didn’t want to write in a void.
Thus began the soul-destroying task of submitting my work to publishers and receiving rejection letter after rejection letter and the soul-searching questions. ‘Am I wasting my time?’ ‘Am I a talentless writer?’ But when I read through my work, I experienced all the emotions I wanted my reader to experience and I thought, Surely I can’t be deceiving myself? It was then that I decided to self-publish. They call it the vanity press but, if nothing else, I would have the satisfaction of seeing my work in print.
I suppose the turning-point in my self-belief was when I made a concerted effort to get my short work, stories and poems, published in literary magazines. The rejections came of course but so did acceptances, often accompanied by flattering comments, which went beyond the requirements of an acceptance email. So far, sixteen of my stories, from my four unpublished collections, Grey Wings on the Tide and other stories, Death of an Undertaker and other stories, Philomena and other stories and El Dorado and other stories, have been published in magazines that span the globe, as well as eight of my poems from my unpublished collection In Search of Self. The result is that I no longer feel I am writing in a void. The important thing is that my work is out there for anyone who is prepared to pay the few dollars for a Kindle version or take the trouble to read a literary mag online.
As long as I have a functioning brain, I will go on writing and (self)-publishing, because it gives meaning and purpose to my life. My novel, The Return of the Dissolute Son, will be published in August 2024 and will be available online for a mere 99 cents. My aim is not to get rich, as you can see. My ambition is to be read. In December 2023, I completed a novel, A Meeting of Minds, that had been going around in my head for twenty years. It will never get published in its present form. It is far too long, two novels in one (164,000 words), which I will probably end up publishing as two separate works.
Now that I have a website, thanks to my friend Giannis, I will be uploading various pieces, which will include some audio extracts from my novels and short stories, as well as an introduction to my novels or collections, in which I hope to explain what motivated me to write them. I should also mention that two of my books, The Frankenstein Legacy and Break, Break, Break are available as audios (read by the author) on ACX.