Why I Write

I have been struggling with my writing lately. Even as I continue to work on the Novel in 90 challenge. Starting and stopping, restarting and fumbling my grip on the stories as life interrupts, I am left wondering why I write.

The Origins of the Question

Over the last month, I have been taking a lot of workshops, both in person and online. Most of those have been ones off of CreativeLive. Craft, Marketing, and Confidence classes alike have filled my days.

The thing I struggle with most if wondering if my writing is worth anything. Especially my fiction. So as I tried to find confidence in my writing, the remedy that keeps coming up in these classes is “Why do you create?”

Why I Write

To be honest, I don’t know why I write. I write because I know I have no choice not to. I know that I have stories stuffing inside me but I can’t fully understand if they have value being externalized.

I’ve held my writing inside for a very long time. As a result, the stories have morphed into multiple versions, none of which are perfect, but all are important to me. The multiple versions makes it even harder to write–I have to pin it down and make sure it works, character wise, plot wise, setting wise…

So I asked a friend on Monday shy she writes. She had a lot of reasons ready on the tip of her tongue and I realized that I didn’t need to have a large groundbreaking reason for why I write.

I could just want to.

I could just not be able to stop.

I could just want to commit the magic of a story to paper.

So let me ask you…

Why do you write?

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