When I had to accept that I wouldn't make it as a pop musician, I started to write a Swiss German novel, which got lost, then another one which got published: "ter fögi ische sounhung". After that I wrote novels, poems, film scripts, magazine articles in Swiss German and in "hochdeutsch", the written form of German German used in Switzerland, or English.
I read in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Urdu und Hindi... I read what I like: Proust, Penna, Morante, Guimarães Rosa, Lara Resende, Ruswa, Ashk, Manto... mangas, Russian post-glasnost novels auto-translated, Japanese and Chinese novels downloaded from the Internet.
Now, 2026, I still write whatever comes to my mind. If agents and publishers don't call me, I manage without a care team. Neither Moses nor Dante Alighieri ever had an agent or a publisher. To be a happy writer is almost as difficult as being a good writer.
Many people believe that a novel they don't know cannot be a great novel. They don't trust their own eyes... I trust my own eyes: If I like a novel or a poem, it is a work of art for me. There is no technical, scientific or "objective" way to judge literature.
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I was lucky to have good parents, the best friends anybody could ask for and to live in a rich country without wars or famines. Now, I am old. My life experience is that money in the bank is good but the prayers of the people whom you helped are more valuable (even than the novels I wrote). The love we send out into the world is making us happy.