Why I write.

I write because of an inner compulsion to tell stories. If I’m honest with myself I don’t particularly enjoy the process of writing. The reward is in the end result; when a story is over, when the characters are alive and no longer annoying my vacant thoughts. Finishing a story is like what I could only imagine a title fighter feels when winning a big fight with a stunning knockout victory. I stand back and look at the sentences, the phrases, passages, and pages as they whimper in the corner too tired to wrestle with me anymore. The process is exactly that, a big fight. From first thoughts, to ideas, to plots and conception, the first creation in my mind heralds many hours of unsettling work with the hope that the second creation will be as inspired as the original.

Writing is like traveling through time, free of any responsibilities, worries, where your own imagination is your guide and your heart your teacher. In this journey there are always moments when you are completely out of control, where you are at the mercy of the process. Where you enter into the epic battle that lies between the first and second creation, the place where all art lives. This place is neither heaven nor hell, neither good nor evil, it is your own worst nightmare and blissful fantasies all wrapped into one. It’s where heroes meet villains only to discover their own villainous traits, and where love is quashed and then re-born…and then quashed again. It’s where you write sentences that you hope will sing off the page into someone’s heart.

In reality it’s not telling stories at all, indeed it’s showing them. Showing the world you have created, a distorted and truthful view of what you see everyday, observations that you want others to see; a world of hope, a world of life, and a world of possibilities. For me writing is about trying to show those observations, about using words and sentences to draw a reader in, to look over their shoulder and get them to look in the direction of where my finger is pointing. Showing them that life is beautiful, no matter the season. That piercing sunshine always comes after the rain, that a still silent breeze always dances in after the harsh wind, and that in every winter their lay an invincible summer. And so here is my own invincible summer, a collection of short stories all written in the winter of 2009, where my melancholy sparked my imagination.

Enjoy.

A.

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

Albert Camus

The Invincible Summer, A collection of Short Stories by Andrew Natale eBook can be downloaded HERE. or through iBooks. A hard copy of the book can be purchased by contacting the author directly on andrewjnat@adam.com.au.