Well, it sure isn't the fame (haven't got any) or fortune (ha!) so it must be the self expression. I got started with writing in the 1990s back in the zine days, submitting travel articles to tiny little homemade magazines. I'd just come back from a year traveling across the Middle East and Asia and had a million stories to tell. The main story was that I went to lots of "scary" countries like Syria and Iran and had a great time meeting wonderful people. That became a thread in my writing that continues to this day.
My career has since shifted to mostly fiction, and the self expression continues. Whether I'm writing about a soldier on the Western Front or a scavenger in a post-apocalyptic wasteland or a guy on Skid Row in Tangier, there's a little bit of me in all my characters. What other job lets you do that?
5 comments:
And you're fortunate you've traveled and had so many experiences from which to draw.
It's fun to stick little aspects of my life in my writing, but I try not to do it too much. Don't want to use them all up.
My favorite part of being a writer is that no experience that impacts me for good or for ill is ever wasted, but becomes grist for my unconscious mind to write deeper. :-)
I don't know if you've written a straight-up memoir of your experiences, but I think plenty of people would love to read that.
So true. Writing always give us a chance for expression!
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