When you become a successful writer, the most important question you would ever be asked is that simple but yet tough question: why do you write?

I have never been asked that question.

Instead, I have been swamped by people who ask the second most important question: where do you get your inspiration?

Most writers answer the second question with a lie. It is usually a huge lie. A writer can say that the heavens open up when nobody is watching and arrows of words stream down into his head and join the veins floating on top of his blood until he lets them out by writing. Yeah, right. Tell it to the goats. Or the writer can say his dead ancestors come out at night to leave synopsis of stories on his reading table. Hm, because I am my grandfather, I do sympathize with writers with such disposition. Some other writers will attribute their inspiration to something in the physical realm that most people know but cannot really relate to – like Lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD, LSD-25, or acid.

I am not in the mood to lie so I will answer the first question. Ok, you got me. That was a lie on its own. I will take the first question because I am making myself available for a radio interview today. I am dreaming that I might be asked that most important question. To avoid being stumped, I want to practice.

Off cut, I did say that I write “to change the minds of men and repaint the pictures of things.” I have said this to myself for as long as I have written that I have even forgotten who actually said it.

If I want to be cute, though, my response will go like this: I write? I don’t think I write. I am sure it is all a dream. One day I will wake up and all my bylines must have evaporated off the pages. It won’t bother me one bit for I know from the beginning that I do not write, really. I just hold pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, and mouth to voice recorder.

I do something consciously, though. I love to see the shape of words on paper. I love paragraphs; those that smile, those that cry and those that are bored. I love them all.

I love the transformation of the whistling noise around me into screaming essays. I hear voices like many people. I gently guide my voices to ruled papers or white screens. And once they are implanted, they transform from ghosts to hunting tigress.

... to be continued