All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not drive on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality.

In other words, writers who are honest with themselves have the most to offer. Last week, Patty Somlo bared her motives in a piece called “The Reason I Write.” While, yes, she’d love to be rewarded with a bit of fame and a bit of glory for her hard work, she writes because she can’t imagine not writing:

…My heart breaks a little bit every time one of my stories gets rejected. At such times, all those bestselling authors, with their lovely country homes and their good hair, seem to mock me. Their success slaps me like one of those wet snapped towels and I hear them saying over and over again, Why on earth does she keep writing?… In our current climate of instant celebrity, it is hard to hold onto the old-fashioned notion that creativity is a reward in itself. But given the simple math, there can only be a small number of winners. Loving to write has to remain the real reason for staying in the game.

I’d love to see a piece titled “The Reason I Read.” Who’s going to write it?

Plus, much to our delight, Diablo Rosso loves books. Thanks to co-owner/performing artist Analida Galindo for suggesting a couple of months ago that Paraguas put books in the shop. Manolo Delgado Venegas‘s La Sociedad de los Limeños Muertos is now available at Diablo Rosso, and more Paraguas offerings will find their way to Avenida A in the near future.

We’re grateful for creative spaces like Diablo Rosso, which favor fresh inventions over stale templates, open source-style collaboration over gatekeeper mentality. Next time you’re in Panama City, be sure to swing by Diablo Rosso. If you can’t squeeze the café into your meal plan, at least pick up a few fun, non-Lonely Planet type postcards (i.e. no Panama Canal, no indigenous people daftly depicted as the ol’ noble savage).

The Story Prize organizers have asked contest nominees to write something for their new prize blog. Here’s a snippet of what Patty wrote (link to the entire essay here):

The images haunted me—men who before succumbing to the awful desert heat left their pants, shirts and underwear folded in neat piles and whose bodies became so dehydrated the men’s fingerprints vanished. These were just two of the gruesome details I learned from reading Luis Alberto Urrea’s book, The Devil’s Highway, about the death of fourteen undocumented immigrants in the Sonora Desert, as they made their way to what they’d hoped would be a better life. I couldn’t shed the sorrow I felt for days. All I knew to do with that sadness was to write.