A reason for writing
A fortnight until our third competition’s closing date and we continue to be bowled over by the entries that are coming in from across the world.
What always strikes me about writers, whatever country they live in, is where their ideas come from.
The entries we receive point to some of the major sources. Some writers are clearly like me. For me, stories always start with a place, somewhere that strikes me so forcibly that the story unfolds around me.
Other writers start with a character, someone so interesting, so intriguing that they can almost tell the story on their own.
Other writers begin with the story itself, an idea inspired by a newspaper snippet, something someone says, a sudden sense of ‚what if?, an idea that comes in a dream.
Some write for other reasons, to get a point over, to add to our knowledge of the world or to make us think about an issue in a different way.
Whatever your motivation - and there will be many others - one thing is certain: if it drives you to sit down in front of that computer or lift up that pen, it’s got to be worth writing about.
John Dean