I write because I believe that words have great power: they can bring comfort, joy and hope. They can reveal secrets and lies. And, while they may not change the world, they can - at their best - change people's lives, even if only for a moment.
I've long made it clear that I believe writers must use their creative gifts with thought and care for the impact those words have on the world they are released into.
Elaine Scarry discusses the ethical power of literature in her brilliant Boston Review article "Injury and the Ethics of Reading"
And I've had a lot to say about the power of words in the following articles:
The Prerogative of the Harlot
What responsibility does a writer have?
Why are movies so depressing these days?
If I've said so much about it, why am I repeating myself?
A while ago I came across a blog (can't remember where, sorry!), which had a link to the great William Faulkner's Nobel Banquet Speech in 1949. Today I was tidying out my desk drawers and found the printed speech. I wept at the beauty of the words. And I realised that, all those years ago, Faulkner put into the most beautiful words what I've been struggling to say for years (that's why he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, I suppose!)
The whole speech on the Nobel Prize website is worth reading, but here are my favourite excerpts:
"... the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
... He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
... He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
... I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
... the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."
I rest my case. And I'll continue to strive to write stories that, I hope, uplift and inspire people to change their inner worlds and, through that sea change, make the external world a better place.