Religion

7 Pages 1645 Words

It is important to show simultaneously the exceptional and the common, the national and the universal, the realistic and the mystical. The
moment a writer attempts to generalize a problem and see it on an expansive scale, he stops being a writer. It is only after his literary
endeavor is completed that he may go and make a speech in support of a candidate or a loved one. His novel, however, must not be a
political dissertation. The role of literature is not to analyze ideas but to describe experiences. Frankly, mixing social and political issues
with writing is not a very healthy practice: its outcome will reside outside true literature.

True literature focuses on experiences and situations. When you read the Bible, you do not know what somebody was thinking, but you
always know what the person was doing. People may sit and talk for hours about what they are thinking, but it is only through their action
that we may judge their true colors. It is a heresy of our times that we use our thoughts and moods as the yardsticks in appraising almost
everything that is around us.

Instead of searching for words, the contemporary art of writing consists of restricting them so much that they become cliches. I refer to
such words as good, bad, decent, immoral, charming, ugly, noble, abstract, cunning, talented those and many others which have been
emasculated.

Talents are born; I do not believe talent can be achieved through hard work. Genes do not produce many talents, in every generation talent
is a rarity. Talent is a freak of nature.

At the same time, it would only be fair to say that a talented person may write bad novels and bad stories.

AZ-B: How do you write?

IBS: In my early days, I wrote in the third person, now in the first, but I will go back to narrate in the third person. I write with a pen, then
I type, but I find it more and more difficult to write by hand. I think I will soon switch over to a typewri...