Revealing the Secret

“One day, writing will call out to you.” Remember his words well. He was my teacher, who guided me into organized reading and discussion, ever since I was twelve years old. Upon entering the University of Kuwait, I felt as though I was circling around writing. So I went to him and said, “I want to write a short story.” “Perhaps the time has come. You can begin writing between you and yourself, and you must not think about publication.” Our eyes met. I was eager to be published, longing to see my name and picture in newspapers and magazines. But he said to me, as if reading what was in my eyes: “Writing is the revealing of a secret, so beware of revealing your secret before it has ripened.” I remained burning with the desire to publish for a full year, bringing him my first story for him to review with me, suggesting adjustments here and there. At the end of each session, he would say, “Write it with the revisions, and it will be ready for publication.” I kept rewriting it in a new version incorporating the changes, bringing it to him, so we would discuss and arrive at new revisions. One short story took him and me nearly four months in that writing workshop. At that time, I wrote by hand, in pencil, to make erasing easier. Until one evening, he raised his eyes, looking at me, with a hint of a smile on his face: “I think you are ready to publish, and to place your name beneath the story.” A dizzying dream that accompanies the young writer, whether boy or man, is the belief that publishing a book under his name will make him a famous author. But this is the temptation of revealing a secret; it is the bait, and it is the first step, which will remain a first step no matter how far the writer’s journey extends. Every writing is the revealing of a new secret, and every writing is a new adventure. A previously successful writing never indicates that the writing that follows will also be successful. And what may escape some people’s notice is that having your name inscribed as an author does not come from a single book or an award; rather, it is built through creative accumulation that bears your signature and your secret, and which has taken from you the most precious thing you possess: the years of your life. The earth completed its rotation, and websites and social media platforms emerged, and artificial intelligence arrived, or “superintelligence,” as former U.S. President Trump called it in recent days. Advertisements swirled around us: “We write about you,” “The idea is yours, the writing is ours,” “We write together,” “Specialists in creative writing,” “Give us your idea, and we will give you a book.” And apart from the free nature of these advertisements, anyone aspiring to write can now hire, at home and out of sight, a loyal and specialized literary editor for free. Yes, you can now enlist someone to write for you, revealing to them the secrets of your soul, which they will cherish and write down without exposing your secret. But the problem is that they write in their own language, with their own understanding, according to the environment they come from, using ready-made formulas, writing for you as they write for others, and drawing on a memory that is not yours. Here, your signature becomes distorted, and your voice dissipates. You may publish a book, but it will bear nothing of you except your name, which will pass before some people, prompting them to smile: “A work written by superintelligence.” You may dream of writing; this is a legitimate dream. But you must prepare yourself for it through reading: continuous reading, encyclopedic reading, organized reading, and serious reading in the literary genre that your soul loves. After a lifetime of reading, writing will call out to you. How enchanting its call is! But at that moment, you must beware of revealing your secret before it has ripened and become a fruit that everyone longs to taste. For writing is nothing but a secret we guard for a long time, to offer it to a stranger named Reader. Talib Al-Rifai