Why We Write

It can't have escaped any chronic writer that their motivation for writing is rather unique. There are a million different reasons people write. To make money, to persuade, to inform, to entertain, to terrorize, to enthrall, to tell the story that hasn't been written (and I don't believe for a second that every story has been told already.) One of the more interesting reasons I heard a friend and fellow writer give for his motivation for writing was this: "my head will explode if I don't." My sentiments were similar. I too have felt a strange compulsion to write and a curious sense of disappointment with myself when I don't.

My own motivation for writing is a bit metaphysical, but is one I'm sure many writers can relate to. As I continued to write more and more, I found that my head was becoming cluttered with hundreds of people: the characters I had been creating. Each one was, at least in some small way, a reflection of myself. Some looked like me, some acted like me, many of them talked like me (which, for those of you who know me, makes for a unique and..."colorful" character) but all of them had at least some small part of me in them.

On the days when I don't write, I can almost hear them talking to me, asking, begging, pleading to be let out. I don't do this by dressing up in a costume or pretending I'm somebody I'm not; I do this through my writing. When a character speaks on the page, that dialog is a reflection of what the character is saying in my head. Crazy no?

I believe that finding the motivation behind your drive to write is important. It's not of paramount importance, but knowing why you do something is almost as important as doing it. We all know that we'll go crazy or die if we don't eat or sleep. Me? I'll go crazy if I don't write. There are a myriad of people who make up the person I am. They are the mental manifestations of my hopes, wishes, dreams and nightmares, and they help make up the person I am as a whole. I can't ignore them, for to ignore them is to ignore myself.

This is why I write: to give voice to the parts of me that are not normally seen. Why do you write?