CAN AN OLD INDIAN ENGINEER WRITE FICTION? Copyright 2004, Michael LaRoccaAn author emailed me three "disadvantages" to her decision to become a writer. Let me answer them one by one.
"1. I'm seventy now and retired."
You are seventy years old. Do NOT list this as a drawback. I'm almost 30 years younger than you but I'm gonna harp on you like your grandmother. NEVER call your age a drawback. I started writing when I was 17. I was terrible. Do you know why? I think you do. I don't even have to quote
old cliche. "First you live it, then you write it." Everybody says that. There's a reason they say it.
By that, I don't mean to literally write about your life. I don't even do that when I'm writing autobiography. I mean that you can't write about real people in real life until you've seen them and it for yourself. Imagination is a wonderful thing, but it takes more than that to write convincingly. You know that. Why are you even asking a kid like me?
"2. Being an engineer, I lack a literary background."
There are several ways to tackle this one, depending on what it means. If "literary background" means reading, that's a problem. I assumed it didn't mean that. If it means some sort of schooling in art of writing, I wrote a lengthy article about that recently. (School sux.)
If it refers to some deep-seated fear that you lack magical mystical gift that makes us writers, that's BS. You know I swear by power of rewriting, and I think logical mind of an engineer may be better suited for it.
We're not beatnik poets who don't know what their own words mean but just say, "Feel heaviness, man." Writing isn't a sprint. It's a marathon. You have to write and rewrite and polish your gem more times than any non-writer will ever realize.
The words DO matter. You have to say what you mean, as opposed to making reader guess, and I can think of many good things to say about approaching task with a left-brained sensibility. Bring all right-brain you can, of course. Just don't forget that's only part of process.
