Most writers write in tandem to their lives, in tandem to their experiences, but good writers create. They create magic on paper, magic in tales, with fiction or fact – the script, unique… the play of words, smooth and textured like cream on crusty bread. Like cream and berries always a soft burst of light sugary sweetness that lingers long after the treat has been devoured.

Good writers borrow, but great writers’ steal… they steal robes and truths and gems spun in webs of words. They probe and bare souls of master crafters in language, words and philosophy. They wear garbs resplendent in classics, but masterfully create compositions and works so imprinted with their unique stamp. They lead minds on journeys and travels to distant shores and different truths, some surreal, even fantastical yet present… some in the now, some living in the past, few in the tomorrows yet not seen.

Great books are written to be read twice, but the best books are held on for life. Yellowed pages often held in hands wrinkled and old, furrowed brows and expressions reflecting the ambles and adventures within those crinkled leaves. Great writers weave stories where drama and tragedy coarse through the minds of readers… where comedy can wear a smile on pages that leap into the lives of the ones holding the book.

When life interprets art, and the days dim to twilights, a good book is not just a read, but a display of affectations, long endured and worked on subconsciously in the author’s mind. We all have a good book within us, tales to be told, stories to be read… its emotions harnessed in storms that vent on pages… books that ensconce sentiments and dreams realised or broken, tied in tiny bundles of grief, joy and all the gamut of humanness that spills on pages.

A writer’s edge is working on lies while revealing the truth. Sarcasm is but a tool for saying what’s unspeakable, a pun, a dance to a nuance. A simile – a polished embellishment, the mark of a true author symbolic to the metaphors, personifications and hidden meanings, craftily embedded in a tangled twist of words. Adhering to traditions of the classics, creating a genre all anew, keeping up with the times, while all the while alluding to the sculptors of the language… robbing a bit here, a little there, working inwards.

Writing is about taking breaths between inspirations and aspirations. It’s about the boundaries between fact, fiction and worlds. Heroes, dead or alive, legends told or untold, protagonist recognized or ambiguous… the play on a string of words, as beautiful as a sonnet, set to tune or a ballad recited to a murmured undertone. Words have meaning, words have entendres, words have impact. It is but wordplay that crafts a fine novel or book. Great writers sculpt, they craft, they chip pieces of true magic worked on cadences of music in life forms.

Writers draw on facts, they state the obvious but in such chiselled and curated ways of language and litany, that every flaw, complexity and strength of human emotion is displayed in ways that makes the reader dive into the well of all human feelings and tenderness, all at once. A good book is a read that holds you prisoner, trapped in the reality and time within it. It draws you in, completely, wholly. It throws you about, it may repel but at the end of your parlance with it, somewhere all books become a vital part of your life. Some you read, some you revisit often like an old friend, some become habits of release and escape. Dusty bookshelves favour your best-loved books, often where pages may spread their cheer far and wide or tears may draw you down a solitary lane of memories. Books are love affairs you have from time to time, the ones you can’t resist. And you always know! You always know, just how the story ends.

A great writer creates magic – the kind that is unseen, the gap between words that transports you to a reality that is not yours. There was a time when we lived to drink a full measure of words and watch the colours of dusk pour through stained glass windows of a vintage library, exploring centuries of romanticism and tragedy, held on dark, mahogany shelves of remembrance.

The best writers spill stories that are many times more powerful than facts at getting attention, generating energy, creating involvement, persuading change, arousing emotions and inspiring thoughts and legends. Somewhere, it has been said that the best writers approach their books with the humility of a witness, not the arrogance of a creator. That is how they are tied and bound in moments of remembrance, that lingers for lifetimes!