haruki murakami was interviewed once and he said that in 1978 he was watching a baseball game and he saw a ball struck to left field and he knew that he could write.
i've kinda had that feeling that i could write for a while. when i was young my mum made us write a journal. i remembered that i didn't like it very much. i remember some things that i wrote about, like how i was proud that my dad's car was faster than a motorcycle, those darn motorcycles! and how we once took a river taxi on the singapore river. my mum would review it. after awhile she didn't any more so that came to that. that sort of half-assed parenting is basically how my folks are.
but that's really just my first memory. nothing to do with my writing.
i guess it stems a little from being smart as a kid. feeling like i could write. i'll be honest, i think it's related. nobody knows that they're smart as a kid because, as you might imagine, it comes naturally. in a way it takes people to tell you. i just thought i liked reading, so i read. and i usually didn't need people to explain books to me. and as it turned out i had a couple of bright spots. so that was that, i was a smart kid. i was smart as a kid.
but that's also just i guess just the start of it. i mean, how far does being a smart kid go? i'll tell you, i wasn't the best of the smart kids, back then. so it took these years and i guess really the enlightening days of the early twenties to become i guess the more intellectual person that i am now. i think i write okay, so i think i can write. i have a feeling that i could write a decent story.
and that feeling is enough i think for it someday to happen. i'm not worried about what to write about. in the meantime i just have to keep reading. but that's the thing too. the last two authors i've read are philip roth and julio cortazar. to me if you wanted to write you would have to ask, well, can i write as good as roth? and can i write as good as cortazar? and if the answer is no, then you'd ask, well, why write at all? why be a little shit writer next to these guys? and to me that is a significant question. but you could write a million books and never touch these guys. these guys are fantastic. but i don't know if anyone who wants to do anything should ask these sorts of questions.
i feel like i could write. i feel it. i've read my murakami, borges, marquez, fitzgerald, orwell, tolstoy. it's a feeling i have. there's no impetus right now. i just feel i could write. that's it.
