Writers are, in a way, magicians. They create these extraordinary worlds with characters, settings, and events and make us believe in them. We do not know such and such; in fact, the existence of some characters may defy logic, but we believe in them, in what they do, we feel for them, we worry about them, we laugh at and with them, and we share their pains. How come?
It is the art of the writer and his/her craft: to take us into the world of someone else. To make us see the world through the eyes of ‘the other’ who may be someone we long for or someone who never crosses our minds. Through a writer’s writing, we travel to distant lands, we participate in glamorous feasts or horrid wars, we spend a night in a prison cell with the convicts,… We ‘do’ everything we can not do in our daily lives. We get a chance to see someone closely, to face his/her choices and dilemmas, and think, “what if?”
Thus, the writer enables us to look at ourselves, our own lives, from a fresh perspective. Having experienced the other, passed a judgment or refrained from it, we get a chance to examine our own dilemmas with renewed confidence or with doubt.
Writers reflect their times, and the best ones, extrapolate into the future. They tell us about what we all want to know: what is to come. Only if we read carefully, if we care to learn to understand their language. Writers write to remind, to remember, and to be remembered.
If you like writing, as I am sure many of you do, here is a chance to try to be the next magician whose story will leave us bewitched and bewildered. You will not know if you do not try; so give it a shot:
http://tirgan.ca/programs/short-story-contest
http://tirgan.ca/sites/default/files/Short%20Story…
Best of Luck!
