Why do I write?
Short answer: Staying active and having a reason to go through the day is not the answer. There is more.
The time when I had less days behind me than ahead of me has a huge influence on the present, when I have less days ahead of me than I have behind me.
Starting any career during retirement is always problematic. You do not just have to convince people you are good at what you do; you also need to convince them you can still think clearly. Most people dismiss my writing as a hobby. I don’t. As the Americans say, it is my third act.
I have never been good at monetising my skills. Selling has never been my strongest point. I don’t like it. Freud could write a volume about the reason, but the fact is that I don’t. It is getting better, though. I have three titles that sell themselves, not huge numbers. However, two or three copies a month is not bad. Considering the total lack of promotion.
Writing novels is more than commercial success:
It makes me feel I am not interrupting the chain. When I was growing up, I was surrounded by storytellers. I spent a large part of the first twenty years of my life listening to stories; some were memories, some were family anecdotes. I always had a sense of being on the receiving end of oral history. Some of my elders were also telling me stories, legends, and other tales they had read when they were young or heard when they were young. For decades, I thought the chain would end with me; now I don’t.
It allows me to stop the world and get off for a while. I have a lot of concerns in my life, things that could monopolise my thoughts and trigger panic. Panic is never the best way to find a solution. My style of multitasking has always been dividing my days into several time slots when I am focused on what I have to do. My stories are set in Venice; the book I am writing now is set in Venice in 1932. For one hour a day, I am in Venice in 1932. No health issues, no financial problems, no other source of anxiety. I am moving around Venice with people I have met in their old age and imagining them when they were twenty to thirty years younger.
It gives me an identity. In our culture, people define themselves by what they do. I am retired is almost a conversation stopper. When I say I am a novelist (bye-bye impostor syndrome), it is the beginning of a conversation. This is not the only way I define myself, but it is a safe, conflict-free way to describe myself.
It gives me a way to ride a couple of high horses of mine, without lecturing. I am a Jew, a European Jew. I also believe that the city of Venice (the historical one in the middle of the lagoon, not the bit on the mainland or on the shores of the Adriatic) is a proper city, not Disneyland. The investigative lawyer in my book, Rachele Modiano Mendes, is Jewish. A member of the large Jewish clan. She and the other fixed characters live and work in Venice. The story is never about them being Jewish, and Venice is a character in the story. Writers have the power to represent reality. My books describe the normality of being Jewish and the normality of living and working in Venice. Tourism is only marginally discussed. Residents have proper jobs.
Most of all, writing and reading are part of my life. They are the reason I carve out time on a busy day, or the time I take to fight loneliness on days when I would have just sat there watching streamed TV or YouTube videos, waiting for the hours to go by. At 72, my body doesn’t always respond the way I would like. Writing and reading keep me young and mentally active.
Why do you write? Let me know in the comments.
New video
This week, a book trailer. Cafes and Secrets will be launched next week.However, the book is already available on Amazon.
New videos are published every Wednesday. Here is the link to the channel, please like, comment and subscribe it helps with the algorithm.
Self-Publishing mini guides.
I am working at a number of mini-guides covering specific aspects of self-publishing.
The first one is a free pdf that details some of the basic aspects of self-publishing.
https://buymeacoffee.com/silvanoauthor/e/509051
The second is also free and discusses why you need to buy your own ISBN.
https://buymeacoffee.com/silvanoauthor/e/509760
The third is not free, it is a 20 pages guide sharing what I learnt in the past three years. It allows you to turn a manuscript into a book on a shoestring budget. It costs USD 4 to download
https://buymeacoffee.com/silvanoauthor/e/516067
It is also available as an ebook from Amazon at a slightly higher price (USD 5)
Where to find my books and a YouTube channel to talk about my book.
I don’t just publish on Amazon. My book are available directly from me (i.e. Perpetuum Mobile Publishing) if you live in the UK or the US, or via a number of other places if you are elsewhere. Go to this page to find all the links (including Amazon).
My next book
My next book. Cafes and Secrets - A Venetian Murder Mystery will be launched May 13th. Set in 1953 Venice, Rachele Modiano Mendes must solve the mystery of four murders and a blackmail ring restarting after the original blackmailer died.
It is is already available on Amazon ahead of the launch-date/
I have decided to keep my Substack free. However, if you decide to support my work, you can ‘buy me a coffee’ a one-off tip by clicking on this link, or you could buy one of my books (the link is in the caption of the last image below) or keep reading my posts, it is entirely up to you.
i write because words are the language of my soul, the music of my heart and the breath of spirit.