The life of a writer is not spent only behind the desk. Sometimes the writing process, sometimes the writer’s identity confronts a person with unexpected and strange situations. Accidental encounters with readers, incomprehensible reactions, strange proposals, or mystical moments related to inspiration are part of this journey. Every writer has unforgettable moments in their memory. What strange and memorable events have happened to our writers?
Medianews.az conducted a survey among the literary community on this topic. We present the answers:
Honored journalist, Doctor of Philosophy, writer-publicist Akif Ali:
“These expressions related to intellectual activity are very familiar to me. For many years, working in various fields of creative-intellectual activity (cinema, radio, television, newspaper, civil service, pedagogy), I have considered the ‘pen profession’ as the most appropriate means of self-expression. Throughout my life, I have earned an honest living precisely with my pen. Writing is an honorable art, but it is a laborious job. When writing, the intellect and the emotional apparatus must work together in tandem. Whatever large or small work you want to write (an article, story, novella, novel, play, speech), both intellect and feelings must jointly participate. To achieve a successful result in this creative process, the intellect must control the feelings, and feelings must not overpower the mind. Because writing is primarily about conveying a certain idea, thought, or intention.
Every writer has their own work style, method, and character. For example, some writers work only at night, or write standing up, arrange the figures of characters in front of them and create the plot, or dictate the text directly to the typewriter.
Having a favorable environment and conditions for creativity is also among essential requirements. For example, it seems I like the cold because I was born in Shusha and belong to the “Pisces” zodiac sign; I am intolerant of hot weather. My body prefers nature—mountains, forests, riverbanks—much more than the big city environment. Even the scorching heat of summer days in the city involuntarily irritates me. Therefore, I cannot work in a warm room while writing. The air in the room being cold, or at least mild, is more acceptable for productive work.
I can work better on serious writings early in the morning, dawn, or very early dawn. At that time, like the air, the brain and heart are also clean, and the doors of the universe are open to a person. I work until noon, then usually in the evening hours, I rest by browsing websites on the internet, reading books, and watching novelties on newspapers, journals, and television, including movies and shows.
There is a famous saying: “Manuscripts do not burn.” But I do not keep manuscripts. After the writing is printed or posted on the website, or published in a newspaper, I “burn” the manuscripts, meaning I tear them up and throw them away; I consider keeping them unnecessary.
Sometimes it happens that while working on a piece, you write several pages consecutively and continuously on the computer without stopping. As if someone from somewhere is dictating to you, and you are just banging the keys… Until you get tired and stop… Then, that day, or the next day, or after a considerable time when you return and read what you wrote again, you are surprised and think: wow, did I write this? How did I write it?! The text seems as if it was sent to you from somewhere above, and you simply transferred that information to the computer. You see such words, sentences, expressions that at another time, you might have spent days working, searching, thinking, reflecting, writing and erasing to find and arrange them into a logical sequence. I cannot explain what this is, why, and how it happens. But I can say that among people with pens, in general among creative individuals and artists, genuinely divine, inexplicable creative processes called ‘inspiration’ occur…
All these are the valuable mysticism of the very interesting intellect-feeling tandem called writing.”
Writer Səfər Alışarlı:
“Throughout all periods in Azerbaijan, writing has had only one problem: lack of talent. The mass reader is not interested in a talented writer. He writes for himself. If what he writes serves art, that is a great success. If not, then somewhere there has been a mistake. Or the factor of luck has done its work. Literature and government are in classic antagonism. Their missions are different, and since they are contradictory in many positions, their compliance and rapprochement are extremely difficult. These problems in our country have not found their solution within the overall cultural context for 30 years. The personnel of the Ministry of Culture are recruited on completely different principles. Foreign policies entangle our cultural policy and suffocate it. The emerging army of untalented people who form themselves around personal and group interests completely takes over the sphere, and under the name of ‘service to the state,’ a competition begins to serve completely different purposes.”
Philosopher Müştfiq Şükürov:
“I am not a writer, I am a philosopher. My books are also mystical. Therefore, I have not felt the need for additional mysticism. Perhaps, for a mindset that denies the mystical side of life, such things come and remain memorable. For me, both the falling of rain and the not falling are mystical. Likewise, the falling of a leaf or its not falling. I am not a literary historian to answer your question with examples from literary history. Surely, literary history would be full of such examples.”
Oğuz Ayvaz,
Medianews.az
