Why I Write

When someone asks me why I write, it’s always a difficult question to answer. Because the thing is, I don’t have a great answer.

I have been a creative person my entire life. Always loved to sketch and draw, or write background, or try to design my own small games. I used to attempt my own comics, and even though it never went far enough where I actually produced anything, the ideas were always stuck in my head. I have a feeling that if I had learned to finish what I started back then, I might be in a far different place right now.

I’m good with computers, good at troubleshooting issues and designing application systems. But that isn’t my passion. I still have these ideas in my head, things like what eventually became Ash & Flame, or my Norse werewolf stories, and they want out. I have characters up there, and plots, and settings and backgrounds that are awe-inspiring and exciting. I want to share them with an audience that might appreciate those worlds, and those characters. I want to show them the disappointing losses, the savage betrayals and the fleeting glimpses of a soul’s redemption.

So I write.

There are other reasons, too. I’m getting better at telling stories, I think, better at pacing and flow, better at characterization, better at finishing what I start. I’m pushing for that because wanting to write, while I have to also maintain a 40- to 50-hour, mentally exhausting work week, is hard. Closing the office door at 9PM and telling the family that I have my own work to do, after I’ve been gone all day, is hard. Trying to juggle a career with a tiring job is hard. That’s not a complaint, just a fact. Just what it is.

I write, because it’s what I want to do. I want to use my imagination, my mental energy, and my time on the things that matter to me. Fixing a server for salesmen, working for someone else who doesn’t have my best interests at heart, that doesn’t matter to me all that much in the end. It’s not the contribution to the world that I want to leave behind.

So I write.

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