Why Write?

Wednesday's Writing on Writing

I don't know why you write. I have only an idea of why I do. Most people are gifted in some area or another, having an innate knack for certain things.

At the risk of sounding falsely modest, I believe I've been given only one gift, and that is a knack for writing.

That doesn't mean I was brilliant at it and didn't need a lot of training and experience. In fact, I'm one who believes that no writer ever arrives. I fear that if I'm not growing, I'm stagnating.

So I read everything there is to read about the craft, listen carefully to colleagues and idols, and try to keep expanding my knowledge and learning.

While I had a bent toward certain sports, and some people think I am instinctively funny, writing is my only gift, and so I have felt compelled to use it. If I could also sing or dance or preach, I probably wouldn't write so much.

I've heard people say you should write only if you are compelled to or can't imagine yourself not writing. And I know people who seem to have that bent. They would write for free if they had to.

I have been asked when I knew I loved writing. I've never loved it. Writing is way too hard to love. What I really love is being a writer and having written.

Being a writer soon became what I wanted to do with my life. And though the work (the actual seat-in-chair writing) is hard and rarely fun, the more I do it, the better I get and the more writing muscles and tools I develop. And there is that rush at the end of a productive day that makes me look back  on it as if it might have actually been fun.

Regardless why you write, keep doing it.