A Writer’s Perspective: Behind the Scenes of Writing – Blog by Ana Bilić

Writing a literary text, theater text or screenplay is a great challenge. For me, it has always been like falling in love again – always fresh, unrepeatable and unforgettable. In my experience…

At school, you get to know a wonderful world of novel characters through reading. For example, the world of characters such as: Huckleberry Finn, Heidi, Dracula, Frankenstein, Alice, Tom Sawyer, Marlin, The Count of Monte Cristo, Captain Ahib, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to name but a few. Even later, we read breathlessly about Ulysses, Madame Bovary, Hamlet, Dr. Faustus, Dorian Gray, Anna Karenina, etc.

I still remember how we – a group of girls – passionately discussed…

It is undisputed that we are born in a certain time and space. We cannot change these circumstances: we live in a certain family that speaks a certain language, we look the way we look, we have a certain skin color and a certain age at a certain time. Many things are already…

While writing, I came to two conclusions regarding the last sentence of a literary work: the last sentence is as important as the so-called famous first sentence, and the successful last sentence should have a connection to the first sentence in the book.

Inspirational images have something magical about them, because they move in the realm of the difficult to define. One of the blue portraits of me, taken by Danilo Wimmer, inspired Peter Paul Wiplinger, a famous Austrian writer and photographer, to write the following equally inspirational reflection on November 15, 2024 and publish it as a social media post:

Whenever I pick up my book “When the Woodlark Sings” with photos of the film of the same name, I remember an interesting writing problem that I call the problem of the interlude in writing. Or: How does the writer improve in their writing?

Ever since we came into the world, we have been putting forward our findings as theses that help us to understand the world and find our place in it. Children are particularly good at studying their parents and their environment and acting accordingly. I still remember as a child…

For me, writing style is like shaggy hair that needs to be combed through and sway in the current like river grass. Everything has to flow and be natural, words and sentences should be brushed through, perspective should be clear and logical…

When I started writing, I never asked myself this question. My writing began – as with many authors – from the inner impulses to write and the need to articulate myself: in other words, from the finest essence of writing. The question only appeared later, and the answer came even later…