Every author has a reason for writing. There may or may not be a goal. They may just want to write for fun, for a career, or because they can’t imagine doing anything else. This week’s question comes from neesrecordaolcom.
Question 88 – Why do you write?
Why do we do what we do? I run because I love running – how it makes me feel, how it keeps me healthy, the time to myself. It’s no different with writing. I’m a creative individual which is also why I love teaching. Writing is my creative outlet. I love how I feel after I’ve written. It keeps me thinking. It keeps me looking at things differently because I try to think of how a certain event would look in words. Running is exercise for my body. Writing is exercise for my mind.
Creating makes me happy, and helps to keep my depression in check. With writing, I can create entire worlds populated by countless characters, and I’m limited by my own sense of scale.
Some days I write to vent frustrations, others to escape to somewhere more interesting than the day to day world I live in. It’s quite therapeutic, even scenes that are frustrating to write.
Because I have stories to tell. I want people to know about and enjoy them.
But even if I gave up on publishing, it would do me good to write my stories anyway. Things that I’ve written with no intention of ever showing anyone have helped me work out how I feel about certain things.
I’m a storyteller. I write because I love the genre and because I have characters that have stories that need to be told. I write to discover what will happen to them.
Because I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t.
I write because there are innumerable people in my head demanding to have their stories told, now Now NOW! They nag me all day long, and the only relief I get is when I’m writing. I’ve had a teeming brain ever since I was a kid, and created a bunch of D&D-style game settings and participated in a ton of collaborative gaming, and all those characters and places I created during those years have gestated into elaborate stories that keep forcing me to the computer, day after day, to type them out. It’s pretty much my life, and I like it, and I’m glad I finally broke the (self)publication barrier so that I can push on from the origin stories into undiscovered territory. The fascination and stress of spinning all these decades of notes and dreams into a solid manuscript is what drives me on.
I love to tell stories. It’s really what I’ve wanted to do since I was about 7 years old, perhaps a little younger. I don’t know that it’s a conscious thing, but I’m very unfulfilled in my life if I’m not writing. This feeling got worse after I published my first book. From that moment, I knew that I didn’t just want to be a writer, I needed to be.
There are lots of little reasons (including unreasonably foolish dreams of fame and fortune), but the main reason is just because I love to write. I’ve been making up stories inside my head since I was about six years old, and I would repeat the scenes and dialogues in my head night after night after night, until eventually a school project made me realize that I could be writing them down. I’ve been hooked ever since, and even if the scenes in question are completely tripe that I know no one will ever want to (or be allowed to) read, there’s still something very enjoyable and cathartic about just sitting down and penning out those ideas.
I write because I have a story to tell. Actually, many stories to tell. I also do it for myself. I want to explore the worlds I have created. I don’t know everything about them, but I want to get into them and learn about them and the people that inhabit them. I want to know what it’s like to live there. If I can do that and provide enjoyment for readers, then that’s all I want.
How about you?
If you write, why do you write? And if you don’t, but enjoy reading, why do you read? Let us know in the comments below.
I Read Encyclopedias for Fun 