Why I write

Every writer who admits to friends or strangers that they write soon learns to expect the question:
“What are you writing now?”

We writers have an answer, prepared for this moment.  In my case, my answer is either “A comedy thriller, very silly but great fun” or “A murder mystery, set in the Peak District” depending which of my current works in progress I’ve been battling with most recently.  And, for most people, this is enough.  They don’t really care that much.  They’re being polite and are now free to talk about subjects which interest them (almost never anything to do with the proud writer’s output!)  I know, I have these conversations and I hear other writers have them too.

But, sometimes, I am thrown by a further question.
“Why do you write?”

This one is unexpected.  For one thing, it usually comes from someone who evidently thinks I’m not up to the task of writing a novel and the underlying subtext is:
Why waste your time ‘writing’?

But it is a good question.  Why do I write?  I could do other things.  I have a small business to run, a house and garden needing my attention, pets to walk, feed and care for.  I have family duties and mortgages to pay.  Why waste hours of my time writing?  I may never get paid for it and, let’s face it, in our society worth is usually measured in hard currency.  Isn’t writing speculative fiction merely a peculiar form of OCD? 

I’ve puzzled over this for some time and here is the answer, my answer, to why I write.

I write to free myself from the constraints of ‘real life’.  In my imagination, I can go anywhere, be anyone, do anything.  Life, alas, is more constraining.

I write because I crave drama but am also a realist.  Adventures are great to write and read about - but to live them, not so much.  I have no desire to scale Everest or plunge the abyss of the deepest ocean.  Too cold, too dangerous.  But I can write about them and experience the thrill of danger - safely.

I write because I love answers and reality rarely gives me satisfactory ones.  In a story, things have to make sense.  There has to be cause and effect, a daisy chain of events which lead to the satisfying conclusion.  Where life is chaotic and random, fiction has order and purpose.

I write to find out what is going to happen next.  I start with a character and a situation and write to discover where that takes me.  My characters seem to have their own ideas about their stories, sometimes to such an extent that I feel I have no control over the plot.  Things happen.  Characters say things.  I just get pulled along in their wake.  It is exhilarating.  And frustrating.  And it is very hard to explain to anyone who has never written.

So, finally, I write to be honest.  To reveal something about the inner depths of my creative mind.  To put myself on the page for anyone to see.  Yes, I hide behind my characters (I am an introvert after all).  But I am there, on every page.  All those hidden facets of me - writing gives them the chance to sparkle.
​
Which leaves one question:
“Why do you write?’

---