Why I Write

One afternoon, a colleague said to me that one of my students had eommitted suicide the night before. Sadly, she told me why. I walked away dry-eyed. I felt her eyes bore holes in the back of my head. I sat down at my desk and stared at the wall. I had known this student so well lid she enveloped me now with her presence, her innocence and her mUle. I had seen her between classes just the other day. I'd thought she looked stressed. But I was rushing madly from one class to the next. And W not the time to speak to her. I turned to the type-writer. And within In hour and a half I had written 'The Falling Star'. I hardly revised it. All .thirty pages of 'The Man Within' grew out of a news brief in the Daily Ntws. 'The Intruder' happened to a friend. And so it goes.