Dear Hanif. Or Janice as the autocorrect wants to be. Apart from being a reader I was lucky enough to interview you and do public events on many occasions as a journalist. On stage and off, you were one of the most naturally amusing people I have met. A writer and I compared notes and recalled that, when we were going through bad times, nothing like yours. But you cheered us up with a very funny but affectionate comment about our predicament. There are lighter moments in your blogs still but i wonder to what extent you have been able to retain what seemed an essentially comedic approach to life through all of this? Best wishes and enhanced admiration. Mark Lawson
A pivotal moment in my life occurred when an article of news journalism, that I hastily assembled in ten minutes in order to meet a deadline, was, over the span of half an hour, savagely torn apart by my classmates, who were also learning the trade.
It was absolutely brutal. In the long term, it left more of a lasting impression on me than the physical and psychic wounds of fourteen-man beat-down that I received from a gang of miscreant youths while I was sleeping rough in London. A few days later, after my ego had recovered, I found that I was able to stand back from what I had written and regard it with a degree of objectivity. Any love that I had for the piece had been knocked out of me and I looked at it with a cold eye. A lot of the criticism was justified. The question that followed after was: 'Since I am not walking away from it, how do I address these issues? How do I fix the article so that it works?”
The good news is that, in 2023, there has never been more opportunity to get your writing out there and find your audience. The old gatekeepers still exist, but the walls around those rusting gates are falling to ruin. It no longer matters if a coterie of agents find you problematic. If the reception desk in the headquarters of one or more of the legacy publishers might as well be a stone boulder rolled across an entrance, then there is no longer any cause for despair. You can self-publish on Amazon or Ingram Spark, or on any number of other platforms, for a decent royalty, and sell physical or digital copies of your book all over the world. Loads of people are doing it and making bank. It might seem intimidating being your own publicist, but if you are a small writer signed to a large publisher, there will be pressure on you to do that anyway.
I wish I had learned to be less precious about writing earlier on in life. It is not this magical delicate thing, formed of gossamer and glitter. It is an absurd and confounding process, more like trying to find your way through a darkened room that is filled with wind chimes and sharp-cornered furniture.
November is National Novel Writing Month. All over the world people are aiming to write 50,000+ word novels over a span of 30 days. Some of these will be published. Well-known, dearly-loved songs have been written and demoed in half an hour. Why can't a decent book be hammered out in a month?
I am writing a psychedelic pirate novel, 2000 words at a time. I am really enjoying the creative momentum of it. By 1st December, I will have written just over 60,000 words, with perhaps another 10,000– 20,000 words still to get down. I will edit and typeset it, and then self-publish on Amazon at the end of January or in February. From a blank page to an actual book in around three months. It will probably sell around a couple of hundred copies. A smaller number will actually read it. People may say unkind things about it, or they may say nothing. It won't matter. I will already be deep into the next book.
The in-facing edge of that double-edge sword is the weight of competition, that is about to be swelled by a tsunami of AI-assisted books. It is a battle you will probably lose, but isn't it enough just to be in the fight? The era of the literary lunch is an anachronism. Your Edwardian romantic drama is locking horns in the online market place with a book where bare-breasted Amazonian women ride around the ruins of Chicago on the backs of triceratops. May the best novel win.
I'm inspired to get a tattoo reading "be bold with disciplined madness," but I do have a question I would love you to consider. Yes, it's hard to set out on the path of a writing career, but what we never know at the beginning is that we have freshness on our side, we are (more or less) young. We have potential: to be the next new thing, the flavor of the month, to appear on Best New Writers Under 35 Lists. But how about when you're at the tail end of middle-age? You've (I've) published a dozen books, won some awards, had a low-grade best seller or two. You're still writing but, as a friend has confided an agent has told her "I couldn't sell a novel written by a middle-aged white woman if it came with a blow job." How does this kind of writer proceed? I have all kinds of faith that you have wisdom to share on this matter.
Dear Hanif, you helped get me started with writing - it was a magical year or so and it ended with a bidding war and a novel published in 16 languages. I remember being astonished that pigs actually flew! But the best part was everything that happened pre-publication... writing quietly and unseen. Afterwards everyone expected something of me; had me pigeon holed as a certain type of writer; thought I could press “repeat” and do it again. It was devastating to fall short of those expectations - try as I might, and I really did. I learned that the publishing world is not so kind and ultimately i decided that being alone in my head was not a great place. Years have passed and I was lucky to be able to pick back up my previous career which thrives, and which has given me again a place to hide and find that quiet safe space to write. When I look back, I think maybe I was too lucky too soon - the first thing I wrote got published when I’d not yet built muscles to deal with rejection... but they’ve been built since. I thought I’d never get back to a place where I didn’t feel ashamed and a failure. It’s very good to fall back in love with a sheet of paper and pencil and not care who’s looking or waiting - because no one is... From there, anything feels possible. You were there at the beginning for me and so you hold a special place - and I wish you all the very best. Thank you. x
"Creativity is its own party, and every day should bring a new experiment" is a mantra I will be saying to myself in the mirror when I try to write again. I have so many ideas and concepts but never manage to complete them. In my career I support artists - musicians and help to encourage engagement in music through education and nurture new, young artists but always have this irritating feeling that I am not an artist myself but 'only' an enabler which I know is privileged work in itself. Am I a coward to not put myself through the pain and suffering required to be an artist? I keep saying, I'll write when I am retired, I'm too busy now, which is such a cop-out. I need to be creative everyday, body and soul requires it but I am safe as a frustrated consumer of art and an 'amateur'. I suppose one question I am asking is, when does the amateur become the artist because I don't think this is necessarily about 'making a living' from your art?
First of all, I'm giggling audibly at Mark's autocorrect wanting you to be "Janice".
That illustrates your point, doesn't it. You're not Janice, you're exactly yourself.
Like most of us here I've had not only to consider working for a living, but actually to do so, for years on end. Your closing sentence notwithstanding, I maintain that this is through no fault of my own.
It's possible to keep writing but the speed and volume vary. The actual writing is the fun part, exactly as you describe: pleasure, energy, &c. The tough and dispiriting slog is finding people who want to read it, exactly as so many commenters describe. I don't think there are any easy answers there but look forward to your responses to other people's questions.
(To those of you feeling daunted by ageism, especially the middle-aged white women variety, consider Bonnie Garmus. She's had to endure some dog-on-its-hind-legs reviews, but she's in her sixties and got the big first-book deal with tv tights anyway. Tights is obviously a typo but I'm leaving it in. Hers might not be your kind of book, but some agent clearly scored while disagreeing with the one representing Karen's friend.)
I'm a woman with a child. I took refuge in that rather than have the child starve. I worked for someone else and wrote behind the shelter shed at lunchtimes. My first book was a hoot. It was about my school days. I didn't live in my home town any longer and wouldn't have survived if I had. I was shunned and my relatives were embarrassed. Now I'm old and have done my best to bash out what I can, but I keep running into other people's objections. Every time I have wanted to say something, the route to saying it has been cancelled by social dictates - unfortunately 'if he beats you, leave,' was one. But the worst one was the 'lived experience' meme that is still buzzing like a blowfly on its back. I wasn't born until after WWII, so my lived experience was 'John and Betty and their dog, Spot'. The mother who went mad on ANZAC days was left in the house while the tribe of her children went with their father to the Solemn Ceremony in tartan skirts and boxer shorts and everyone came home to a nice lunch afterwards, ignoring the woman in the kitchen who was sweeping up the busted crockery and letting out the occasional shriek. Not my story. We got on with our chops.
Can you share a creative exercise for writing students from your own teaching experience?
I've been writing on and off for around 15 years and the pinnacle of my writing career is joint third place in a writing competition run by the Isle of Wight Library Service. I'm feeling jaded and would appreciate an exercise to get my teeth into, which might also distract me from the nagging feeling I should have retrained as a plumber and not done that MA in Creative Writing.
Also, you're a music fan, aren't you - what do you think of the 'new' Beatles single?
I’ve just read your most recent post about starting out as a writer and agree wholeheartedly with much of what you say. I recognise all the qualities you list as required for making an artist successful; as someone who’s been making music in some form for over 30 years now, I have most of those qualities, but lack the fearlessness; being from immigrant stock, fear of judgement is like a second skin and it’s hard to shed.
Still, I also agree that ‘creativity is its own party’ and I take untold pleasure from creating songs. I’m interested to know what you think; is art for its own sake, with no audience to speak of, still art? Does it have merit?
Dear Hanif, As a read of yours for over thirty years, I started writing in my sixties, three years ago. I have two unpublished (but I’m ever hopeful) novels and I just adore your call to arms: “Fearlessness; passion, eccentricity, sensuality, originality and the unity of voice and subject matter. Be bold with a disciplined madness, bringing new news to jaded people. Magic is hard work to make, but pleasure is an energy; creativity is its own party, and every day should bring a new experiment.” This resonates. Thank you. Make no mistake, you are and always will be a writer. One that we who read your blog admire...and now love. For you have given us what is the heart of writing and being a writer, and what is that if not creativity, honesty and love? With love (I am getting used to typing that to someone I’ve admired for decades and now I’m actually writing to), Anna
What remains unfinished? What quality in yourself would you like most to develop? I would like to ask you some questions that I need answers to, but am afraid. Years ago, when I moved to Italy, a friend said, "I thought you were an artist- why aren't you painting?" I was enjoying smelling the flowers, actually, and did not want to do anything more. My father said, "I fail to see what you are doing with your life," and I reassured him that living was enough for me. I feel that creating something, which is the gift of oneself, can take many forms. I cook a lot- and I am going now to put something in the clothes dryer. I look at the stars. I think of my children one after another, and of people I know, and I love them. I like to describe people in writing, too. But they become too alive- is that my job? To recreate people? My mind is a hard and ice-like mind, sometimes radiates heat too- and I'm malicious at moments when I least want to see it. This is made up- I have no idea who I am. I used to be sure, to organize, to put my shoulder to the wheel, and now my shoulder is sore. And I am not sure. What can I ask you? Can you imagine a world where we survive our own inventions? Can you imagine a world that pleases you the way your old world did, the one which was a gas gas gas? Can you say for a fact that you love truly?
Hi hanif, been thinking ab out your words. They are advice to newborn authors, and i have nothing to say about that. But in the larger sense, they are for all of us, advice on how to address our lives, our work in the best sense, the work that gives us a sense of what makes our lives meaningful. Your list of passions, including eccentricity, define you. I am a contrarian, and wonder if not each one of your listed qualities might have the opposite that would also yield an art we’d be able to love and engage/. Couldn’t every passionate work of art be matched by one which is dispassionate, that is flat and even totally devoid of emotional pull. A rothko, if you will, vs a rembrandt. Or vice versa; why not take rembrandt as dispassionate and rothko as passionate. Eccentricity is your calling card: you abhor the ordinarily easily accepted truisms, and i can’t fault that. Except to say, how hard it might be to go the other way. I once heard a brilliant lecture about chinese art, or japanese, don’t remember which. It was built on the opposite qualities of those classical western ideals of originality etc which you list. Instead the cliche was honored, honed, perfected, beautified. You can say the same for much african art, especially as it might be tied to a religious function. Lastly, trying to finish good ole proust, and he is nattering on and on about art, exactly your topic here. This is the last chapter, and he is emphasizing the need for art to emerge from our suffering, because suffering makes you feel what you otherwise wouldn’t have known, it is more profound in the experience of mere happiness, it leads you to the general and to truth, to the Idea, i would say. Very Idealist a notion of art, but for him it centers on the need for suffering to define our experience. You do not plug that one in, and it seems to me you are reaching more for joy than for suffering. Who wants pain, after all? But, despite your evident dismiss, your writings out of the pain of your experience have had a real resonance for all of us, i would say. They put us in an uncomfortable place where we might not have been with your other writings and experiences, and force us to think from that box. For myself, i believe that has been a productive, a good experience, putting me in touch with feelings and thoughts that i would otherwise not have wanted to share with others. In a word, in proximity not simply to suffering, but to mortality.
Hola Hanif! Te escribo desde Argentina sin mucho para decir, pero aprovechando que abriste este canal. El primer libro de tu autoría que leí fue "Nada de nada" y quedé atrapada para siempre en tu forma de contar que encuentro completamente alineada a tu discurso y a la forma en la que veo y trabajo el arte: singularidad. Ser audaces y valientes porque, como decía Lorca, lo mediocre y el término medio es fatal. Me resultó muy interesante saber que eras también director teatral y a la vez no podía ser de otra forma. Por mi parte, escribo novelas y soy actriz entre otras tantas cosas que forman esto que soy. Disfruto mucho de leerte, lamento no poder colaborar con tu situación a través de una suscripción paga. Si googleás acerca de mi país, vas a saber por qué. Nuestro poder adquisitivo se derrite en tiempo real.
Espero que te encuentres bien, y con "bien" me refiero a con muchas ideas e imágenes circundando. Con mucho para contar, con tu forma de ver las cosas, con tus seres queridos.
Dear Hanif. Or Janice as the autocorrect wants to be. Apart from being a reader I was lucky enough to interview you and do public events on many occasions as a journalist. On stage and off, you were one of the most naturally amusing people I have met. A writer and I compared notes and recalled that, when we were going through bad times, nothing like yours. But you cheered us up with a very funny but affectionate comment about our predicament. There are lighter moments in your blogs still but i wonder to what extent you have been able to retain what seemed an essentially comedic approach to life through all of this? Best wishes and enhanced admiration. Mark Lawson
A pivotal moment in my life occurred when an article of news journalism, that I hastily assembled in ten minutes in order to meet a deadline, was, over the span of half an hour, savagely torn apart by my classmates, who were also learning the trade.
It was absolutely brutal. In the long term, it left more of a lasting impression on me than the physical and psychic wounds of fourteen-man beat-down that I received from a gang of miscreant youths while I was sleeping rough in London. A few days later, after my ego had recovered, I found that I was able to stand back from what I had written and regard it with a degree of objectivity. Any love that I had for the piece had been knocked out of me and I looked at it with a cold eye. A lot of the criticism was justified. The question that followed after was: 'Since I am not walking away from it, how do I address these issues? How do I fix the article so that it works?”
The good news is that, in 2023, there has never been more opportunity to get your writing out there and find your audience. The old gatekeepers still exist, but the walls around those rusting gates are falling to ruin. It no longer matters if a coterie of agents find you problematic. If the reception desk in the headquarters of one or more of the legacy publishers might as well be a stone boulder rolled across an entrance, then there is no longer any cause for despair. You can self-publish on Amazon or Ingram Spark, or on any number of other platforms, for a decent royalty, and sell physical or digital copies of your book all over the world. Loads of people are doing it and making bank. It might seem intimidating being your own publicist, but if you are a small writer signed to a large publisher, there will be pressure on you to do that anyway.
I wish I had learned to be less precious about writing earlier on in life. It is not this magical delicate thing, formed of gossamer and glitter. It is an absurd and confounding process, more like trying to find your way through a darkened room that is filled with wind chimes and sharp-cornered furniture.
November is National Novel Writing Month. All over the world people are aiming to write 50,000+ word novels over a span of 30 days. Some of these will be published. Well-known, dearly-loved songs have been written and demoed in half an hour. Why can't a decent book be hammered out in a month?
I am writing a psychedelic pirate novel, 2000 words at a time. I am really enjoying the creative momentum of it. By 1st December, I will have written just over 60,000 words, with perhaps another 10,000– 20,000 words still to get down. I will edit and typeset it, and then self-publish on Amazon at the end of January or in February. From a blank page to an actual book in around three months. It will probably sell around a couple of hundred copies. A smaller number will actually read it. People may say unkind things about it, or they may say nothing. It won't matter. I will already be deep into the next book.
The in-facing edge of that double-edge sword is the weight of competition, that is about to be swelled by a tsunami of AI-assisted books. It is a battle you will probably lose, but isn't it enough just to be in the fight? The era of the literary lunch is an anachronism. Your Edwardian romantic drama is locking horns in the online market place with a book where bare-breasted Amazonian women ride around the ruins of Chicago on the backs of triceratops. May the best novel win.
I'm inspired to get a tattoo reading "be bold with disciplined madness," but I do have a question I would love you to consider. Yes, it's hard to set out on the path of a writing career, but what we never know at the beginning is that we have freshness on our side, we are (more or less) young. We have potential: to be the next new thing, the flavor of the month, to appear on Best New Writers Under 35 Lists. But how about when you're at the tail end of middle-age? You've (I've) published a dozen books, won some awards, had a low-grade best seller or two. You're still writing but, as a friend has confided an agent has told her "I couldn't sell a novel written by a middle-aged white woman if it came with a blow job." How does this kind of writer proceed? I have all kinds of faith that you have wisdom to share on this matter.
Dear Hanif, you helped get me started with writing - it was a magical year or so and it ended with a bidding war and a novel published in 16 languages. I remember being astonished that pigs actually flew! But the best part was everything that happened pre-publication... writing quietly and unseen. Afterwards everyone expected something of me; had me pigeon holed as a certain type of writer; thought I could press “repeat” and do it again. It was devastating to fall short of those expectations - try as I might, and I really did. I learned that the publishing world is not so kind and ultimately i decided that being alone in my head was not a great place. Years have passed and I was lucky to be able to pick back up my previous career which thrives, and which has given me again a place to hide and find that quiet safe space to write. When I look back, I think maybe I was too lucky too soon - the first thing I wrote got published when I’d not yet built muscles to deal with rejection... but they’ve been built since. I thought I’d never get back to a place where I didn’t feel ashamed and a failure. It’s very good to fall back in love with a sheet of paper and pencil and not care who’s looking or waiting - because no one is... From there, anything feels possible. You were there at the beginning for me and so you hold a special place - and I wish you all the very best. Thank you. x
Dearest Hanif:
"Creativity is its own party, and every day should bring a new experiment" is a mantra I will be saying to myself in the mirror when I try to write again. I have so many ideas and concepts but never manage to complete them. In my career I support artists - musicians and help to encourage engagement in music through education and nurture new, young artists but always have this irritating feeling that I am not an artist myself but 'only' an enabler which I know is privileged work in itself. Am I a coward to not put myself through the pain and suffering required to be an artist? I keep saying, I'll write when I am retired, I'm too busy now, which is such a cop-out. I need to be creative everyday, body and soul requires it but I am safe as a frustrated consumer of art and an 'amateur'. I suppose one question I am asking is, when does the amateur become the artist because I don't think this is necessarily about 'making a living' from your art?
Much love,
Ishani
(Writing in Bromley!)
First of all, I'm giggling audibly at Mark's autocorrect wanting you to be "Janice".
That illustrates your point, doesn't it. You're not Janice, you're exactly yourself.
Like most of us here I've had not only to consider working for a living, but actually to do so, for years on end. Your closing sentence notwithstanding, I maintain that this is through no fault of my own.
It's possible to keep writing but the speed and volume vary. The actual writing is the fun part, exactly as you describe: pleasure, energy, &c. The tough and dispiriting slog is finding people who want to read it, exactly as so many commenters describe. I don't think there are any easy answers there but look forward to your responses to other people's questions.
(To those of you feeling daunted by ageism, especially the middle-aged white women variety, consider Bonnie Garmus. She's had to endure some dog-on-its-hind-legs reviews, but she's in her sixties and got the big first-book deal with tv tights anyway. Tights is obviously a typo but I'm leaving it in. Hers might not be your kind of book, but some agent clearly scored while disagreeing with the one representing Karen's friend.)
Should I quit art and spend my life revving, vamping, and encoring my artistic friends with every grain of my precious body?
Asking for a friend.
I'm a woman with a child. I took refuge in that rather than have the child starve. I worked for someone else and wrote behind the shelter shed at lunchtimes. My first book was a hoot. It was about my school days. I didn't live in my home town any longer and wouldn't have survived if I had. I was shunned and my relatives were embarrassed. Now I'm old and have done my best to bash out what I can, but I keep running into other people's objections. Every time I have wanted to say something, the route to saying it has been cancelled by social dictates - unfortunately 'if he beats you, leave,' was one. But the worst one was the 'lived experience' meme that is still buzzing like a blowfly on its back. I wasn't born until after WWII, so my lived experience was 'John and Betty and their dog, Spot'. The mother who went mad on ANZAC days was left in the house while the tribe of her children went with their father to the Solemn Ceremony in tartan skirts and boxer shorts and everyone came home to a nice lunch afterwards, ignoring the woman in the kitchen who was sweeping up the busted crockery and letting out the occasional shriek. Not my story. We got on with our chops.
Bravo! You make it sound so godamned fun! Long live self belief and not really giving a f!
Hi Hanif,
Can you share a creative exercise for writing students from your own teaching experience?
I've been writing on and off for around 15 years and the pinnacle of my writing career is joint third place in a writing competition run by the Isle of Wight Library Service. I'm feeling jaded and would appreciate an exercise to get my teeth into, which might also distract me from the nagging feeling I should have retrained as a plumber and not done that MA in Creative Writing.
Also, you're a music fan, aren't you - what do you think of the 'new' Beatles single?
All the best,
Den
Dear Hanif,
I’ve just read your most recent post about starting out as a writer and agree wholeheartedly with much of what you say. I recognise all the qualities you list as required for making an artist successful; as someone who’s been making music in some form for over 30 years now, I have most of those qualities, but lack the fearlessness; being from immigrant stock, fear of judgement is like a second skin and it’s hard to shed.
Still, I also agree that ‘creativity is its own party’ and I take untold pleasure from creating songs. I’m interested to know what you think; is art for its own sake, with no audience to speak of, still art? Does it have merit?
Dear Hanif, As a read of yours for over thirty years, I started writing in my sixties, three years ago. I have two unpublished (but I’m ever hopeful) novels and I just adore your call to arms: “Fearlessness; passion, eccentricity, sensuality, originality and the unity of voice and subject matter. Be bold with a disciplined madness, bringing new news to jaded people. Magic is hard work to make, but pleasure is an energy; creativity is its own party, and every day should bring a new experiment.” This resonates. Thank you. Make no mistake, you are and always will be a writer. One that we who read your blog admire...and now love. For you have given us what is the heart of writing and being a writer, and what is that if not creativity, honesty and love? With love (I am getting used to typing that to someone I’ve admired for decades and now I’m actually writing to), Anna
“
What remains unfinished? What quality in yourself would you like most to develop? I would like to ask you some questions that I need answers to, but am afraid. Years ago, when I moved to Italy, a friend said, "I thought you were an artist- why aren't you painting?" I was enjoying smelling the flowers, actually, and did not want to do anything more. My father said, "I fail to see what you are doing with your life," and I reassured him that living was enough for me. I feel that creating something, which is the gift of oneself, can take many forms. I cook a lot- and I am going now to put something in the clothes dryer. I look at the stars. I think of my children one after another, and of people I know, and I love them. I like to describe people in writing, too. But they become too alive- is that my job? To recreate people? My mind is a hard and ice-like mind, sometimes radiates heat too- and I'm malicious at moments when I least want to see it. This is made up- I have no idea who I am. I used to be sure, to organize, to put my shoulder to the wheel, and now my shoulder is sore. And I am not sure. What can I ask you? Can you imagine a world where we survive our own inventions? Can you imagine a world that pleases you the way your old world did, the one which was a gas gas gas? Can you say for a fact that you love truly?
Hi hanif, been thinking ab out your words. They are advice to newborn authors, and i have nothing to say about that. But in the larger sense, they are for all of us, advice on how to address our lives, our work in the best sense, the work that gives us a sense of what makes our lives meaningful. Your list of passions, including eccentricity, define you. I am a contrarian, and wonder if not each one of your listed qualities might have the opposite that would also yield an art we’d be able to love and engage/. Couldn’t every passionate work of art be matched by one which is dispassionate, that is flat and even totally devoid of emotional pull. A rothko, if you will, vs a rembrandt. Or vice versa; why not take rembrandt as dispassionate and rothko as passionate. Eccentricity is your calling card: you abhor the ordinarily easily accepted truisms, and i can’t fault that. Except to say, how hard it might be to go the other way. I once heard a brilliant lecture about chinese art, or japanese, don’t remember which. It was built on the opposite qualities of those classical western ideals of originality etc which you list. Instead the cliche was honored, honed, perfected, beautified. You can say the same for much african art, especially as it might be tied to a religious function. Lastly, trying to finish good ole proust, and he is nattering on and on about art, exactly your topic here. This is the last chapter, and he is emphasizing the need for art to emerge from our suffering, because suffering makes you feel what you otherwise wouldn’t have known, it is more profound in the experience of mere happiness, it leads you to the general and to truth, to the Idea, i would say. Very Idealist a notion of art, but for him it centers on the need for suffering to define our experience. You do not plug that one in, and it seems to me you are reaching more for joy than for suffering. Who wants pain, after all? But, despite your evident dismiss, your writings out of the pain of your experience have had a real resonance for all of us, i would say. They put us in an uncomfortable place where we might not have been with your other writings and experiences, and force us to think from that box. For myself, i believe that has been a productive, a good experience, putting me in touch with feelings and thoughts that i would otherwise not have wanted to share with others. In a word, in proximity not simply to suffering, but to mortality.
I enjoyed this essay immensely! Thank you for continuing to share with us through your writing.
Hola Hanif! Te escribo desde Argentina sin mucho para decir, pero aprovechando que abriste este canal. El primer libro de tu autoría que leí fue "Nada de nada" y quedé atrapada para siempre en tu forma de contar que encuentro completamente alineada a tu discurso y a la forma en la que veo y trabajo el arte: singularidad. Ser audaces y valientes porque, como decía Lorca, lo mediocre y el término medio es fatal. Me resultó muy interesante saber que eras también director teatral y a la vez no podía ser de otra forma. Por mi parte, escribo novelas y soy actriz entre otras tantas cosas que forman esto que soy. Disfruto mucho de leerte, lamento no poder colaborar con tu situación a través de una suscripción paga. Si googleás acerca de mi país, vas a saber por qué. Nuestro poder adquisitivo se derrite en tiempo real.
Espero que te encuentres bien, y con "bien" me refiero a con muchas ideas e imágenes circundando. Con mucho para contar, con tu forma de ver las cosas, con tus seres queridos.
Te mando un abrazo!
Maru