Illustration by the Author · © 2025, A. N. D’Angelo — All rights reserved
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21 December 2025
I read, and I have never stopped since the first novel I loved. I have always been a reader. I read everywhere. I read because I love reading, and I write because I love reading. Only then do I write because I love to write.
I am a writer. What, how, why, and when I write is my business. If I want to write it, I write it. When I’m writing, I am: I don’t lie, I’m no hypocrite, I don’t evade, I look people in the eyes, and I say what I think. I do not weigh my words; I do not sugarcoat it; I use words appropriate to the context and tone.
When I write, the perspective is personal, sincerity is absolute, honesty is full. It’s a magic formula to reach the truth, which in its turn can be embraced, despised, ignored, but never changed. It’s mine.
While writing, I surrender myself. I’m pure and shining, a visionary. Free. I think about what I see, feel, and smell. I am ubiquitous; I live in real life and on the other side, at the desk and beyond the threshold of reality facing imagination. I have no limits; I let go; I love and hate. I feel inside, on my skin, and in the distance. I am the good and the bad, victim and tormentor, as I am nemesis, catharsis, and coveted rest. I am the beautiful and the ugly. I am tree and mountain, sun, rain, and snow, child, teenager, man, and old woman. I am God and his absence. I am death, and I am life.
The journey, not the destination, is what matters.
Face to face with words, in front of the mirror that the page represents, what counts is my own experience. It is me at stake, and no one else. Therefore, I listen to critics, then I decide on my own. I recognize harmful remarks and accept fair criticism. In both cases, it’s because I am a writer: I know what I’m doing, and I understand when I did it poorly.
I’m familiar with my “voice”, because I have written a lot, everywhere and whenever I had the chance. I know the difference between writing and telling. If you ask me which is which, it’s because you’re not a writer. For you, the answer doesn’t matter: it occurs while writing. I know that the story, its balance, the characters who breathe life into it, and the plot’s artfulness are more important than the technique. I expect myself to make them superior. The technique doesn’t have any passion, neither rhythm, let alone musicality. It’s cold, heartless, and wants to impose one direction, while it can only correct the given one. So, if a reader is fond of it and talks to me about commas, “show, don’t tell,” info dump, and point of view, I advise him to read for real. I cut short. When a conversation focuses on the tale’s surroundings and not on the tale itself, it’s not a conversation: it’s wasted time. Readers who want to be writers see the flaws in others’ text, and they are blind to its meaning for themselves.
I am a writer, and I do write. I love to talk about writing, but only after I have written. I talk about my readings and about what I learned. If I talk about other writers, it is to praise them. Mocking doesn’t belong to someone who loves art, but to those who aren’t artists. If a writer pisses me off, I prefer to say it loud and clear, with no frills or embellishments, a little harsh, but never rude: derision is weakness, taking full responsibility for one’s own ideas is strength. In fact, who doesn’t matter at all to a writer, what and how matter.
I give importance to achievement, not to the market. The market is for the publishers, who declare themselves ignorant of the best-seller formula; however, they decide what will sell in advance. I leave the market to those who grope in the dark, and I move on my way. Does my novel have no market? It was the same for thousands of novels, which later were successful because they were “forerunners”: that market didn’t exist yet. They created it. That’s the only acceptable meaning of the absurd definition of “creative writing.” So, do I consider myself a literary genius? Nope, but nobody exists who can yet tell me I am not. Anyway, it must be proved that I believe in such a silly idea.
I am independent. I never accept the evidence without expanding on the subject, and I cannot avoid it. I read the lines and reflect on the space between the lines. I stare at the horizon, and I daydream about what lies a little further. I am pragmatic, and I let myself go in my imagination. I love reality and fantasy, and I’m unable to decide which one I prefer.
Am I creative? I don’t know what that means, but in the meantime, I tell stories that would never have existed without me. Maybe this is it. Or maybe not. Maybe “creative” is just a way to define the unknown. The world is full of people who label to understand its complexity. They point things out because they have no substance.
It’s simple: a writer writes. They are.