Inga M. Beck

Sometimes I and other people wonder why I want to be a writer. Sometimes it seems strange, to want to sit down, everyday, like I’m working on a school project and write things down from my head. Spend days upon days worrying, wondering, imagining, plotting and so on. It takes blood sweat and tears folks, I wont lie. But still I want to do it.

Why? Well, I enjoy it. There’s nothing that compares to the feeling you get when you have finished something that you yourself created. I think it was Dorothy Parker who said “I hate writing, I love having written”. I imagine it’s like a miniature version of what a mother feels at the birth of her child. The difficulty and pain of the birth itself is forgotten in an instant. But in the case of a book or a story, once you’ve given birth to it, it moves away from home and becomes independent… you don’t have to overprotect it for 18 years… you can if you want to though, of course… you can keep it locked in a drawer and never allow it to go on a single date. EVER. And perhaps it will never be free until your dead but no one will ever understand it because it’s been isolated for so long and….. wait… what was I talking about?

Oh yes, why. I think there are many reasons I like writing, one of them being I was never much of a talker. I think I can sound so much smarter on paper than I do in person. And you can write about anything you want. You can create whole new worlds and people wont try and lock you up in an institute… because for a writer being a little crazy is normal.

The real reason however, the core of my joy of writing is to make up for all those years of failed and/or delayed comebacks. Doesn’t that ever happen to you? Someone says something clever but it takes you one second too long to come up with the appropriate response, and just like that, the moment’s gone, it wont be clever anymore. Even sometimes I’ve thought of the appropriate response instantly, but hesitated to actually say it out loud and again, failed. I can bring up an excellent example, one that has haunted me and will continue to do so for the rest of my life probably. It was 3 or 4 years ago that I was sitting in a class on American cultural history at the University of Iceland, there were at least a 120 students in there I think and I didn’t know a single one of them. Well, the teacher had gotten carried away with the subject of Icelanders wanting the US army to leave, but they’d had a station here since second world war and after much discussion he posed a rhetorical question: when the shit hits the fan (I sadly cannot remember what shit or what fan, I’ve never been good with knowing what is going on in the world around me, I already have too much made up stuff going on in my head that takes up all the space) , when we are in need of help or protection… “Who are you going to call?!” The room was quiet, no one seemed to have an answer to that question, but my inner voice immediately screeeeemed “GHOSTBUSTERS!” And as you have no doubt guessed, it never made it to my outer voice, the moment was gone before I had the chance to move this epic response to the outbox of my brain.

I would have been a legend folks. The kids (yeah, university or not, we’re still kids) would have actually known who I was, someone would have remembered me. But alas, it was not to be. Very few people with whom I had English classes remember me. Still to this day the epicness inside my head is known only by me and some of my closest friends and family members. But I want to share the joy, I really do. And I have found that the best way for me to do that is writing. When I write I am sitting in that lecture room, everyone quiet as I yell out “Ghostbusters!” with all my heart.

and here is the handsome trio x)