to be or not to be - bah! who cares!

While I believe that writing is my life after my life (if you get what I mean), I also agree that it is a passion that yearns within everyone who wishes to express their inner self in their own creative way.

This, in the Sultanate of Oman, can be done in several ways, one of which is the most famous is depending on the government to back you up. Which is what most of the newspapers and tabloids in Oman have taken on route. Now, don't get me wrong, if you believe you can't get to your target by going independent, then why go on such a failed-top mission in the first place? Just so you can make yourself an easy buck? I think not. Writing is about having to write with the biggest guts that you think you have because you have firstly the right to, and secondly because you know it's the truth when you write it with a conscience and not with an organization like the government that you have to keep looking over your shoulder to see if their still smiling at what you wrote or getting ready to pounce at you with their red tape.

The reason I am writing this is because yesterday - since I was sick - I never attended the inagraguation ceremony for the Omani Writers Association/Guild.

I was read in an internet article by a professional writer that if you seek glory to write, then you're not a writer, if you seek to be well known then you're not a writer, if you seek fame and fortune from writing then you're not a writer. For a writer is heart with a pen and soul that knows only the pen as their one and true love. And without such, there can be no life for either.

I think I made part of that up. Point is: you're a writer only if you write to tell the truth with all honesty even if it costs you your life. For thats where the honor is.

I don't think that I need some organization to tell me that I am a writer or not, nor would I ask for some organization to help me in financing the book because I know in the end that it's gonna slap me in my face some day.