I have often been accused of espousing contradictory opinions. My constant rebuttal is that I consider myself a fanatic of no creed. I always try to analyse all issues from all possible angles. This attitude is reflected in my writing. The genre I exercise, namely the psychological novel is, of course, the only one that is useful to my purpose in attempting literary writing. I emphasise the word “attempting” because I firmly believe that serious writers can only attempt to produce literary works of any merit. And each time I set out to write a new story, novel, whatever, I feel as if I am writing for the first time regardless of the fact that I am only a few months shy of my 65th birthday.

In this regard I find solace in the fact that Dun Karm wrote his best work, Il-Jien u lil hinn minnu when he was more or less my age. Whether this analogy fits or not, I refuse to sit on my laurels or look back with excessive satisfaction on my four decades of writing. I still believe I have to write my “best book”.  Now, you want to know, as you put it, “how I write”.

To be honest, I write best standing up. I typed whole novels on my feet, using my father’s Imperial typewriter on my mother’s old chest of drawers. Standing up allows one to roam round the room – something one cannot do when using a PC. Standing up means one can chase characters’ movements, measuring their paces and use of elbowroom, imitating their gestures and reactions to the situations they find themselves in and which the writer is trying to reproduce in the narrative.

I repeatedly insist that each and every word that a writer introduces in the text must be relevant and revealing of the theme as well as further elaboration of the plot. To me the plot is simply the concrete elucidation of the theme, and what the characters do is simply the explanation of it. You cannot imagine how I envy painters, and furthermore, cineastes who can with one stroke of the brush or with one movement of the camera say what takes me pages to communicate.  I envy particularly the artist Alfred Chircop who, with the introduction of a “new” colour conveys meanings that take me pages and pages to communicate. I am not implying that Chircop does his job with less labour than I. In fact I know that he is always struggling with his concepts, ideas, messages and, after all the work he carries out, he still feels he has not yet passed on the thoughts he wanted to share with the viewer. What I really mean is that in the painter’s case, the spectator can receive the message much quicker than he does with books.

Again, I do not want you to run away with the idea that painting is less painstaking than literature. In Chircop’s case it certainly is not. Chircop takes great pains (and successfully so) even in the way he displays his paintings. An exhibition of his at St James Cavalier with God’s light streaming through the windows must have taken him endless hours to organise, in order to create an atmosphere that left one breathless – and with a heavenly feeling.

Now, we all have personal ideas about paradise. Fundamentalist Muslims believe they will meet 70 or so houris there. Well, I cannot subscribe to such crass ideas, not only because Paradise is by definition a spiritual place, but also because houris did not actually mean “virgins” but “grapes”. Houri is an Aramaic word that entered Classical Arabic, but I will not take your time discussing such literary matters. Heaven to me may be best depicted … well, pardon my repeating this, in paintings such as Chircop’s.

You asked me to tell you about what I write. Well, I will tell you also what I read. I read mostly poetry. Not only because I find much of the prose being written as too sloppy (and soppy at times) and hardly up to scratch for my tastes as a reader, but also because I find pleasure in reading precisely that: verse. In any language, not least Maltese. Someone asked me why I do not write poetry. The honest answer is: I have too much respect for poetry to do that. On the other hand I will refrain from telling you how much I dislike a lot of would-be poetry written in such a silly, stupid, fashion.

Another thing I deeply dislike in our literary circles is the attitude adopted by certain critics who haven’t grasped the basic meaning of lit crit, namely that they should first attempt to understand what the writer set out to say – which is his right as a writer – after which they should attempt to find out whether he succeeded in doing that or not. Critics who expect writers to write what they expect them to write are no critics at all.  They are … charlatans.