In an edited version of a speech he gave to launch the Emerging Writers' Festival last Friday, Waleed Aly contemplates the passion for writing that is required to produce great works:
Truly admirable works exist simply because they must for their own sake. The writer neither controls them nor wills them into existence, but they emerge nonetheless. Every writer knows when they encounter a text that forces itself into the world, that cannot be suppressed, that simply must burst into its ultimate expression. Here, the writer is compelled. This is what it means to write with passion: to write for reasons one does not comprehend, but is powerless to resist. To write utterly organically. Anyone fortunate enough to be so compelled will inevitably produce something compelling.The author is a Melbourne lawyer whose book, People Like Us, will be published by Picador later this year.
