Ilka Tampke on writing

„Very few writers are motivated solely by the desire for recognition. It is lovely if it happens, but it cannot be the reason we sit down every day to stare at a screen and be immersed for hours in the soup of our thoughts. Most of us are motivated by the power of an idea, an image, a character, a world, a moral conundrum. This engages our imagination so deeply that we are willing to stay with it for the years it may take to find its most artful expression. (...) The completion of a novel brings an end to the creative relationship we have with our idea, but publication gives it a chance to be sustained in the imagination of readers. This is what fuels a fiction writer: the ongoing life of the ideas we love. The saddest thing about a book failing to reach an audience is not the wound to the ego, but the ending of the conversation. (...) Don’t underrate being underrated.”