Practically

Good morning or good evening, dear reader. I ask for your attention, interest, and focus, for I am here today to return to the library of your thoughts the idea of the writer. I will not speak to you about literature as an art form, nor about rhetoric merely as a tool. Rather, I wish to clarify the role I perceive for a writer. I may be a newcomer in the eyes of some major authors, or not a novelist of a certain stature, but I want you to know what a writer does, and I want the writer to know what he ought to do. To avoid offending other writers, regardless of their status, I wish to tell you that writing, on a personal level for the writer, is an act of catharsis before it is an act of publication. This is a truth rarely acknowledged by writers. It is a therapeutic medium for its author, akin to visiting a psychiatrist, sitting on the long couch, and venting the worries and thoughts from his heart. The writer empties his inner self onto paper or the keyboard, writing what he feels, what he understands about life, or even what he imagines about it. All of this is beautiful… but it is not enough. Some writers believe that the reader is responsible for carrying their psychological burdens. One writer produces a thousand words, and if you ask him, “What did you intend to say?” he is puzzled before the reader even becomes so. The writer has found relief, but the reader leaves exhausted! This is not writing; it is a private therapeutic session to which people have been invited without permission. The true writer does not write merely to relieve himself, but to connect. He writes because an idea deserves to travel from his mind to the minds of others, and from his heart to theirs. He writes to awaken a question, soothe a fear, open a window, or shift a perspective. If the reader finishes the text feeling that something within him has stirred, then writing has fulfilled its mission. And even if what he writes is for the reader’s entertainment, he must at least be a good entertainer, not merely commercial. Therefore, I always say: a writer must know what he is writing, why he is writing, and for whom. If he wishes to publish what he has written, it must resonate with people. If he writes fantasy, for example, or a fictional story, then in addition to its entertaining nature as fiction, it alone does not constitute literature that lives on without a distinct idea and presentation. Literature opens horizons, plants new awareness, and enables humans to see themselves and the world in a different way. If it does not do so, the author should write it for himself, and he will have fully achieved the therapeutic purpose.

I would also add, dear readers and writers, that there is no topic that has not been written about, nor any idea that has not crossed a human mind before ours. Nothing is truly new, not even in what I am writing to you now. What is always new is the manner of presentation. How do you convey ideas to people? How do you present them with artistry rather than dragging them? How do you dress them in a garment that people can understand without stripping them of their depth? Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the decline of reading in some societies. This is a discussion I have addressed many times with groups of intellectuals and readers. Because the writer has stopped going out into the streets and has climbed into his ivory tower. He writes for a small, specific group, forgetting the masses, and waits for praise from the elite while ignoring the existence of the majority, and then wonders: Why don’t people read? Because people did not find themselves in the texts. They found linguistic posturing, bloated sentences, and terms requiring a translator, while life outside continues in a simpler, yet more authentic, language. By the way, among the great writers of the Arab world and the world at large is Naguib Mahfouz; he wrote for the street, and therefore the street continued to read him. He did not write from above the people, but from among them. He sat in cafes, listened to the vendor, the clerk, the driver, and the housewife, and then wrote them as they were. He did not display his culture over them, but gave them a voice. Therefore, his characters were not merely literary figures, but faces we know, and perhaps sit beside every day. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature while sitting at a coffee shop in a popular neighborhood, not in a palace distant from reality. I believe this is the true role of the writer. The writer is not a pen that consumes ink, nor a machine that produces words. The writer is an eye that sees what people have become accustomed to until they ceased to see it, and a tongue that speaks what many have failed to express. He is a voice that captures from the heart of society and returns it to it, clearer. He does not exclude the truth because it is disturbing, nor does he beautify it because it is harsh; rather, he exposes it so that everyone can see it as it is. He does not hold the rudder of the ship alone, but helps the passengers see where the ship is heading. In my view, the writer does not write about people only, but with them. He creates a shared sense, reminding us that we are not isolated individuals, but passengers on a single vessel. Our seats may differ, but the sea is one, the storm is one, and arrival or sinking will be for everyone. If the writer succeeds in making the reader feel this human partnership, he has fulfilled his mission before he even finishes what he is writing.

Finally, in my articles here, I strive to be more practical than theoretical. I do not wish to add words to words, or debate to debate. We are tired of texts that end as they began, leaving the reader in the same place. Texts that annoy people with their wretched theorizing without offering practical solutions. I aspire for the reader to leave every article with an idea he can apply, or a question worth searching for an answer, or a situation that prompts him to be slightly better than he was before reading. What helps the writer fulfill this mission is the reader who pays attention, which is why I asked for your focus at the beginning. And those who criticize to understand and to build. Because words alone do not create impact; impact is created when they find someone who understands them and tries to act upon them. And upon God we rely, and by Him we seek help.