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It all started when we returned from our holiday in Romania and I found myself living the same tragedy of leaving my country that I'd experienced almost eleven years ago. Somehow, the perspective is different and so am I, but that doesn't mean it is easier for me to cope with the reality. I've been making lists of good things happening in my life, you know , some sort of "count your blessings" master list to blue tac on my fridge and read it everytime I feel homesick. And God is my witness, I have so many positive stuff in my life, I acknowledge it and give my thanks for it. But, darn it, everytime I say this, something comes to blow my bubble of self-contentment... This time, it was a book. I've read it all in a breath and I was like, wow...it blew my mind away. It is Lisa Jewell's "The Truth About Melody Browne". After I finished it, I put it down and stared into space and felt like an idiot. I mean, not in a thousand years I am going to be able to write a book like that...no way...
I have to tell you that this writing business is one the things that keeps me sane, keeps me ticking. Writing for me is like breathing and the hope that some day I would be able to finish a fiction book gives me a reason to fight off the demons. Well, I know a thing or two about writing, as I was (still am?) a professional journalist, I published a non-fiction book and so on. But I did it in Romanian, my mother tongue and now I am struggling to find my voice as a writer IN ENGLISH. And a struggle it is. I don't know, writing in English seems the right thing to do (at the moment at least) and even though it gives me headaches and nightmares I still think I am on the right path...Well, until I stumble across a piece of work like Lisa Jewell's, that is.
So, yeah, it is a Sisyphean task and yeah I constantly feel the urge to burn all those written pages I so proudly call "my book". And yes, now nad then I feel I am crap but ocassionally I am so pleased with myself and if you think I am going to give up, you're wrong. I AM NOT. Because life is a fight and I am such a damn good fighter...
3 comments:
Oh I so hear your pain! You are a good writer! I can't wait to read the finished book.
The voice tellin you you can't write, it is to insumountable is the wrong voice to listen to. I wrote my first book by simply writing. Just wrote and wrote what was in my heart and did the rewrites a the end.
Pour your heart out! into the book! and ask God to guide your hands.
Keep on fighting! I am sorry you are experiencing such turmoil in leaving your homeland -- again. Maybe the writing and the working out of the homesickness will work together somehow, one to help the other.
No, you won't give up. You have an amazing capacity to carry on despite any inner or outer turmoil, and your posts are such an inspiration to all who read them.
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