Pat ol' advice

One time I emailed Pat Rothfuss asking him about writing advice (methods, software, books, discipline). He answered me (for real) this.

In my opinion, what you use isn't very important. What's important is that you write.

This was 2 years ago and my book is almost finished now. I think it's the best advice anyone ever gave me, and it was from a complete (yet famous) stranger. A well known writer without any knowledge of my work, my background, or even my taste in literature, was urging me to simply write. Somehow this meant that he believed that EVERYONE should write, and this was important. It still is.

Writing is a bitch, but I find hapiness in writing. I love what I write, I do. Probably because I forget really easy my own work and after a few weeks I see old chapters as if reading something anew. So for me reading is a lot like time traveling to visit my younger me. I don't know if I'm a good writer, I just try to be a fun storyteller. I try to write the stories that I want to read, and say the things that somehow I've needed to hear in a certain time. No, I'm not bragging, this is my opinion. I don't even get paid -never have- for writing. Yet writing is the only thing that can truly say I'm Cristian E. Caroli.

I nowadays think of my question to Pat as a stupid question. The only true advice that anyone with any experience in storytelling can give is as simple as "use both hands when using the keyboard", and that's great. Because there's not such thing as originality. Everything is a mix. We even start as a mix, you are the combination of an egg and a spermatozoon. Mix stuff up. Please, do the things you love to do, specially if you're not first, for you will not be alone in your quest. People are always going to tell you what to do, and how to do it. And it takes time to understand that they're just people. Just like I am, and like you are. Be yourself, the more you are your own person, the more original you will be.

A story is fiction, and fiction, by definition, isn't real. Fiction is in your mind, art is in your mind, your own mind. Of course there's a way to do things, and a coherent road for telling a story, writing a book and painting a landscape. If there weren't, doing these things would be impossible. The thing is that rules are made by men, but you know what? You are a man, you can write rules, too. Use your own rules, the ones thar work with your mind. You have your own story, you need to find a way to tell it if you want to be an artist. In my opinion, that's what artists do. Me, I can only give you the one advice I can give to any human being with absolute certainty:

Don't be original, be yourself. You are unique (for better or worse), and that's as original as it gets.

okbye!