What is Writing?

A writer is a gatekeeper, someone who presents a created reality in its most interesting form so that individual readers engage with it on various levels, understand it, and ultimately, if the work is in the upper bracket, contribute to it.

In this, a writer’s main tools include recognising where each individual reader’s attention is, engaging it and directing it repeatedly onto the most interesting and key simplicities of a created truth until a connection between the individual reader and the truth has been established, and then constructing a bridge deeper and deeper into the reader’s heart so that the reader comes to know that truth rather than simply 'know about' it.

By ‘truth’ here is meant anything from the moral or emotional or spiritual impact of a short story to the profound and interwoven message of a grand novel.

This bridge to truth is made by making sure that the created reality is as interesting as possible, by clearing misunderstandings out of the way, and by moving forward at the most optimum pace.

To put it another way, created truth as revealed through fiction to a reader is an unexplored kingdom with an empty throne. The wisdom of the writer provides the map.

Choosing the right setting, selecting the best characters, devising the most engaging plot, providing the necessary amount of shared reality in scenes, and attracting attention through carefully planned and run chapters or sections are part of what a writer must do to get the product of a more knowledgeable, more emotionally affected or wiser reader.

Given that you have found and conveyed the work to its right audience, there is no such thing as a difficult reader; there is only a failure to recognise where a reader’s attention is, followed by a missed attempt to redirect it and a lack of success in removing obstacles in the way of that particular reader.

Readers who are trying to engage with created worlds but failing can and should first be addressed in the writing, as this is the primary action of a writer —to connect the reader with the creation.

The whole structure of the writing should be there to connect readers to truths and bring about a state of affairs in which individual readers are in tremendous affinity with a range of such truths.

That is writing.