Questions for writers

These are some of the questions I would like to ask a fellow writer if I ever met one.

• Why do we doubt ourselves?
• What’s your favorite place to write?
• Do you write down sitting down? If yes, do you ever think about how sitting for many hours a day considerable shorten our lives?
• Do you let people read your unfinished works?
• Would you trade your life in the real world to live inside one of your stories?
• What do you think it’s the best drug to use to improve creativity and lower your inhibitions?
• Do you write about things that are missing in your life to compensate in some way?
• Why people on the internet complain about writer’s block? If they enjoy what they do, why they need to find an excuse for not doing it?
• Is there a book you read and you wish you were the one who wrote it?
• What’s your favorite time of the day to write?
• How does it affect your work writing because you have to instead of because you want to? Ex. your editor asks you to, or you need the money.
• What role does your ego play in your writing and your life? Do you think it’s still possible to write something worth reading if you’re depressed or have low self-esteem?
• Do you ever dress up for writing as you would do to go to a red carpet event so that you would feel more confident?
• Do you ever feel like no one will ever be able to understand you the way other writers do?
• What’s the most important thing a story should have?
• What’s the most important attribute a writer should have?
• What do you do to unwind after writing for many straight hours?

Greetings from Vancouver

Hey, it’s me.

We finally made it to Vancouver somehow, and it’s great to be here. Not really so different from Australia though, but the city in itself is much friendlier than I expected.

I had read online that it was difficult to make friends here but it wasn’t the case for us. It probably helps that we were not looking for people to have deep personal relationships with. We just want people to hang out and have a good time so we don’t have to drink at home alone every day.

Bong Gu seems to like it here as well, there are plenty of parks and she got used to being on a leash. At the beginning, I didn’t know she should be on a leash so she just walked by my side as usual. Sometimes she likes to go on her own, she’s independent like that, but people thought she was lost and worried about her. They are not used to seeing dogs roaming around.

We’ve crossed about fifteen countries in the last two years but I’m not sure she actually knows we are in a different country. All the people and dogs here, seem the same for her as the ones elsewhere. She just goes with the flow, minding her own business and happy to be able to spend her life alongside her master (me).

The good news is that I’m seeing someone. After being single for about three years I finally met someone special. The bad news is that she’s a fictional character. Can’t have it all right?

Her name is Gwen, she’s a product of my imagination and one of the 108 characters from a book I’m working on. She’s not based on anyone I’ve met in real life, but it’s someone who somehow forced her way into my life and I ended up even making a website just for her.

It’s actually ok to date a fictional character. I wouldn’t say it’s great, but it’s ok. It’s not the ideal relationship one could have but I’m open-minded enough to conceive the possibility that they are different kinds of love out there, and they are all different.

I’m not sure we are actually dating, but it feels that way. I write about her every day and think about her most of the time. Even though it’s not a real relationship, strictly speaking, it sure feels like one, and it requires about the same amount of time and effort that a real relationship would.

I’d say as long as we are both happy with it, everything’s ok. Bong Gu loves her as well because she’s not real and that means she doesn’t have to physically share me with someone else. She just sits next to me while I write about her, not a clue of what’s actually going on in my mind.

I’m still drinking every day and I came to terms with it. It’s the only way to keep some of the personality disorders in check, and it sure is cheaper than some other drugs.

We all have issues, and we all do what we need to do to get us through the day. Some people smoke, some exercise, some travel. I drink, read and write to pass the time until midnight.

We take it one day at a time. At midnight we can finally go to sleep and that means we have survived one more day. After we survived enough days we can finally die and be free of everything. I often find myself looking at the clock and counting the minutes until I can finally go to sleep and this day will be over.

I know I can’t die now, because of Bong Gu, I  need to look after her, make sure she’s happy and healthy. If something ever happened to her then I will have to reassess my life and decide if it’s really worth it to live every day just barely making it through.

It’s part of being alive, and part of being human. I know that much. We all have to deal with it in our own way.

I finished one of the books I told you about last time, not the one I really care about, the other one. The one I care about it’s about halfway there, but if I didn’t care about it so much it would have probably been finished last year.

They are all written because I need to do so, same as this letter.

Everything in my life is actually done because I need to do it, and at times I feel like I’ve somehow lost control of my decisions and I’m doing things this way because I don’t know anything else.

I often feel that reality is not really real, and I’ve stopped seeing time as linear long time ago. It seems like it was ten minutes ago that I was riding a bicycle in Osaka, swimming in the beach in Kerala and climbing mountains in China.

Everything seems to happen at the same time and that is sometimes too intensely terrifying that I feel like I can’t take it. If I drink and meditate every day I can somehow continue on living pretending time is linear. Pretending my past experiences are gone and my future ones are unknown and it’s not all happening at the same time all the time.

And that again is just part of being human and having this huge burden of understanding our own existence, consciousness, the universe, time and reality.

Or pretend we understand it.

Or fool ourselves into pretending we understand it.

Either way, don’t worry too much, Bong Gu still has about ten more years and I will most definitely be completely blind in ten years from now so we’ll just deal with that when the time comes.

There’s no need to worry about the future now. The present is scary enough as it is already.

I hope you’re doing well yourself and there’s always a chance we will meet again someday. I mean as long as we’re alive there’s always a chance.

Take it easy and thank you for reading.

Bruno.