There’s something endearing about the way Maria Amir writes. As Features Editor, her work grounds each issue always tackling the quarter’s theme in an oblique but unforgettable way. The Missing Slate would be incomplete without her.
I am uncomfortable with the term ‘Writer’, because I have always felt it needs to be earned rather than slung on the shoulder as casually as one does ‘I’m a cynic, I’m a dreamer, I’m a belladonna’. Being a writer means having an extraordinary power at one’s disposal, it means immortality set amid a page and printed in vowels and consonants for the world to read and react to, for as long as they choose to do so.
And one can never really do enough to earn it.
I do write however; it is by far my most significant attribute. I write lists, poems, bumper stickers, Facebook statuses, tweets, 10-page diatribes, books, philosophies, academic papers, reports, articles, abstracts and journal entries. I read books and as I do so, I write my words into the margins. I compose random musings on turquoise post-its wherever and whenever I can find them. But am I a writer? I don’t know that yet. A writer to me is a Borges, a Leonard Cohen, a Dostoevsky, a Wilde, an Austen, a Woolf…I am not a writer yet but yes, it is what I hope to be.
As for TMS, we hope to provide a launch pad where words can finally shed their falsity and emerge ‘true’ to your intent (Yes, we aim high). For those of you brave enough to call yourselves writers already; for those who aspire to the title and for the ones who have a thought that needs words to flourish – this is the place, this is the platform and I hope to be a catalyst on your creative journey.
Let us paint, play and compose with the vowels and consonants at our disposal.
Here’s to the birth of an original thought!