Recently, I saw a web site host a short story competition and publish the results. The contest winners were met with various reactions - from downright gushes to vehement flames. Going through the winners' entries and the reactions, it struck me that so many people have so many thoughts on what makes a good story. Yet, so few of them actually get around to writing anything, let alone a short story for a contest.

It's easy for a writer to tell his reader to try writing a piece before turning critic. But then, as one of my teachers so admirably put it, you don't have to be a hen to know that an egg is rotten. So where does that leave us? Can a reader abuse a writer because the writer has written something he doesn't like? Or is the writer's right sacrosanct?

The writer, as a creative artist, has the right to write, but the moment he or she has finished writing, the piece belongs to no one. It is an open field. Bouquets or brickbats, they belong to the writing, not to the writer. For the writer, having written, moves on. A creative writer rushing to the defence of his work, is like a dog returning to its vomit. It is the sign of an immature writer and a thoroughly uncreative mind.

The above, of course, holds only for works that are purely expositions of the writer's creative abilities. Any other work, and the writer is duty-bound to stand by it, and defend it, unless of course, as has often happened in the past, his own views have changed.

Creative work and creativity are for none to define. They are for none to govern. They remain, evolve and die, for each one of us, especially and individually.

Cheers.