Why Do We Write?

Before I can say anything else, I would like to wish a late Happy Birthday to the Goddess of Writing, J.K. Rowling herself and The Boy Who Sold Billions of Books, Harry Potter. Yesterday was indeed their birthdays. Happy Birthday! May we all have 5% of the popularity you do.

This is our 50^th post guys! That’s why it’s coming so late, because I wanted to write something special for post 50 and couldn’t think of anything.

It came to me a couple of days ago, but I didn’t work on it right away because I was trying to finish the revision I’m working on by August (didn’t work. I made it through about 2/3s though. Only problem is that I promised myself I’d actually start working on my summer homework when we got to August. So I have a problem.)

Why do we write?

This is actually a question I’ve asked myself a couple of times.

I cannot speak for everyone. I’m only one person and I can only really tell you why I write and why I think other people do. Maybe you write for completely different reasons.

But whether there are different reasons or not, you and I both have this one crazy dream.

We want to write books.

Why?

Think about. For some reason in our society we put meaning in a couple of scribbles on a page. A couple of scribbles thrown together is a word and when you put those together it’s a sentence. A handful of sentences thrown together is a paragraph. Once you string a whole bunch of paragraphs about the same thing together it becomes a story. Why would anyone want to dedicate their time and their life to that? Mixing and matching squiggles in a way that is has some meaning?

Even if you can mix and match them really well, maybe if you get some sort of thrill from seeing them together in a sentence and a story, why would anyone put themselves through what we are? It’s hard to write a book. It’s not enough to come up with characters or a plot, you have to develop them and have a world to go along with it. You have to pace everything just right to keep people interested, you have to play to your audience, you have make sense, you have to tie up loose ends, you have to stagger your sentences, you have to make sense.

Then once you’ve done all that, you have to go back and rewrite it twenty times. And then you have to send it in to people who act like they want nothing more than to tear your fragile dreams apart and eat them sprinkled on a salad like bacon bits.

Even if you find someone who doesn’t tear them apart and in fact like them, you now have to rewrite it a couple more times and work your rear end off trying to get people to read it all so you can do it again.

Why would anyone put themselves through this?

Some people are just really good writers. For some reason those thrown together squiggles really speak to them. It’s just a fact: some people are naturally better writers than others. Those natural writers can’t really get by without hard work, but they do have a leg up on the writers who don’t. For some of those people, writing is just natural, just something that they do.

There is a lot of attraction to just doing things that you’re good at. It feels really good to be good at something, and so there are people who write just because they’re good at it.

Then again, I’m good at math but I hate it and would literally rather die than get a major in math.

For me, it actually goes back to when I was seven years old. That was when I really got into reading. I think that’s probably where it comes back to for most people. They enjoyed reading. I’ve only ever met one person who likes writing but not reading, and she was dyslexic so reading was painful for her.

My older brother and sister forced me to read the Harry Potter books before they would let me watch the movie that was coming out soon. So I did.

I can’t remember if it was Harry Potter itself or if it was the reading spree that I went on afterwards, but I knew that I wanted to be able to make people as happy as reading made me.

I feel like that what it comes back to for most writers. Most writers enjoy reading and want to be able to create that enjoyment for other people.

Over the years as I’ve spent more and more time writing, I really have been writing since I was 7 and now I’m almost 17 so almost ten years (though I would die of shame if I had to read some of my 7 year old writing. I remember I was going to write a book with my best friend at the time — not Margaret — during Recess. She used my middle name for her main character’s name and I used her middle name for my main character. They both discovered that they had magical powers and had to go off to a school to learn to control their powers. Sound familiar? I still remember the opening scene. They were going to a water park together and Beth ended up breathing underwater) it’s developed.

I don’t know if a desire to make people as happy as you are when you’re reading is enough to carry you through the writer’s block and the revisions and the rejections. But for me, the feeling of creating intricate plots and characters that breathe… that have pasts and experiences and traumas and personalities and worlds for them to live in. It’s about as close to God as we humans can play.

I can’t really think of any other moments when I feel as accomplished as when I finally come up with a solution to a plot problem, or I finally figure out a way to explain a concept that I have in my head.

Or the moment when I finally finished my first book. I don’t even know how to describe it; it’s just as awesome as that moment when you finish a book or a series that has taken you on this incredible journey of up and down and driving you nuts and making you happy at the time. And somehow it all works out, for better or for worse.

I love just the pure creationism of it. I get to come up with worlds and stories just with what’s in my head, my fingers and a computer/paper and pencil. I can explore my own ideas about controversial topics. I can share my opinion and debate it with myself with no one thinking I’m insane. I can share all my clever witticisms that I can never seem to come up with in the real life moment. I can make people laugh and cry and sit on the edge of their seats with anticipation. I get to make people think.

It’s beautiful.

There are lots of beautiful things and talents in this world. I would love to have a talent for art. I don’t. I know a lot of people who do. I think that dancers are amazing. I’m completely jealous of people who can just pick up new languages like that. The world needs people who can solve equations like breathing. We need people who can manipulate chemical compounds like we do words. This world would be a very very sad place if there weren’t people who had the talent of being nice to everyone.

All the same, I’m not sure I would trade my talent for writing and my desire to for any other talent in the world. Because it is hard, and frustrating, and sometimes you just cannot find the right word to save your life.

But I’ve never felt the same pleasure I feel from writing as I do from anything else. And that’s why I write.

Do you agree? Have a completely different opinion? Why do you write?