Just out of curiosity . . .

[jpskewedthrone]

For the writers out there: Why do you write?

Comments

[sistercoyote.livejournal.com]

I have stories to tell?

(Actually, I don't write nearly as much as I should. How do you deal with it when the story you're trying to tell is frustrating you?)

Oh boy...

[treize64.livejournal.com]

I don't think there is a single reason behind it, but rather a confluence of sorts.

When I first started doing the whole story thing in seventh grade, it was this power of constant discovery. It was like being born over and over and over again each time I wrote. There's still a bit of that, although it's been tempered by experience and narrative conventions.

It's adventure, but at the same time, it's educational. There are stories I write because I like the characters, but there have also been stories I write (like the one I'm working on now) that have something I want to say to people. With this, I can talk in a way I wouldn't be able to in a normal conversation. I can make my point breathe and bleed and hope and hate. And it's a truly glorious thing.

Also, I think Richard Price in the foreword to David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets captured perfectly the final reason. There's this journalistic impulse to look for the greatest of internal revolutions in the smallest external actions, to paraphrase. To see God strutting His stuff, so to speak, and be there to document it. While that perhaps holds more true for non-fiction, I do believe it applies to fiction, and that realization has had an incredible impact on my writing.

I don't think I've figured out all the reasons behind why I write and why I enjoy it so much. I don't imagine I'll ever figure them all out, but this seems like a good place to start. Thanks for asking that question.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

There are all these feelings and vague ideas and half-formed dreams running around inside me, and I feel compelled to chase them. I'm not sure why. Sometimes they run ahead of me and I get lost, but then I stumble across the tracks of one, or find another, and then I'm off again.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

There's another option?

I do not understand this concept of "not writing."

[miintikwa.livejournal.com]

Because I am the only one with MY stories to tell. I love to read, and the stories are fun, but I am always left, at the end of the book, with the "gee, I wonder how it would have been if [insert plot point here...]"

So I tell my stories, and hope someday that I will be able to share the magic.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Why do I write? For the same reasons I breathe. Not writing, like not breathing, is very bad for me.

I wrote from the time I was ten years old until I was about 23 or 24. Then for complicated reasons entirely due to my ex and the need to feed my kids, I stopped writing for more than 20 years.

The stories didn't stop crowding my head, the voices telling me about their lives didn't stop talking to me--but I couldn't do anything with them. I lost 'me' in the process of making everyone else happy and trying to be what other people thought I should be, which wasn't one of those weird SF&F writers. I was completely miserable and not totally sane for that 20+ years.

Not that people would hold me up as a model of sanity now. *g* But the worst day writing is a thousand times better than the best day not writing.

[pjthompson]

Because it's there.

[cedunkley.livejournal.com]

It's the only way I can keep from disappearing.

[madkestrel.livejournal.com]

I grok this like you wouldn't believe. Wow.

[vcmorris.livejournal.com]

I write because I have to. I'd go mad otherwise. I'm a bit of an introvert when it comes to expressing myself and writing, in journal or fictional form, helps me get those feelings out. I can either sob myself silly while writing in my journal or I can violently kill ex-bastard boyfriends at point blank range. It's great therapy!

When I try to take a break from writing I get very antsy and anxious. I always feel like I have to have some sort of writing project (or two or three) going. Creation make me calm and content, distracting me from the worries of the outside world, even if for just a few hours a week.

[llwheeler.livejournal.com]

Because I always have, and because if too many days go by without me writing anything I get really grumpy.

normal/sanity

[faithhunter.livejournal.com]

All these comments make me feel normal. And sane. And yet, I am pretty sure I am neither.... Hence, I write.
Faith

[wyldemusick.livejournal.com]

Because the little people who live in my brain would tunnel their way out through my forehead if I didn't write.

[airycat.livejournal.com]

I was sort of mulling on that yesterday. A Writer Writes (http://airycat.livejournal.com/89953.html)

[i-renovated.livejournal.com]

Megalomania? No. Fantasies of megalomania, then--until my characters beat even that fantasy out of me, too. huh.

I write to understand the world, the universe, I cannot fathom; I tell myself stories to keep the dark from consuming my compassion--and I like to think that those words might one day keep lights on in other people's hearts. I write to be a candle in the window, for me it is an act of devotion and faith.

[i-renovated.livejournal.com]

BTW, thanks for asking, this was one of the best comment threads EVAR. Thanks also to those who responded.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

I have no idea.

[ex-kaz-maho.livejournal.com]

Because... I can't not write. It helps me make sense of things. Or maybe it just encourages me to try to make sense of things.

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

Because the ideas won't let me stop.

[darkspires.livejournal.com]

Because my characters are like ghosts. They haunt me until I tell their story.

[chichiri-no-da.livejournal.com]

I've really, really enjoyed reading everyone's comments ^_^

I started writing when I was about 5 years old, and I never really knew why. I just knew I had stories in my head, and I wanted to tell them, and I seemed pretty good at it.

Then I had a 5 year period where I wrote absolutely nothing, because it was 'hard' and I was 'too busy', and it was agony.

Now that I'm writing again, I don't just write because I love diving into worlds and bringing them to life, but because I'm honestly afraid not to. That's why I don't just write, but I write every day, even when it's hard, and even when I don't really feel like it. I'm afraid of how horrible it felt when I didn't write.

[fireun.livejournal.com]

honestly? i like playing with words. i like the sound of what i am writing more than anything else. and i have been told that leads to a rather recognizable style (i fail at anon writing communities around these parts. everyone always knows its meeeee)

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

(a) Because the characters invade my brain and make me.

(b) Because writing is fun.

(c) Because even when writing is not particularly fun (viz. synopses, tricky bits, transitiony bits), writing is more fun than not writing.

(d) Because I am still not over the thrill of discovering that some people sometimes like to read what I write.

[annathepiper]

Because I have stories in my head, and I want to let them out.

Because I enjoy working with words.

Because I got tired of the drama involved with online roleplaying games, and yet, I still like working my way through a plot. ;)

Because it amuses me to mentally fill in the cast of a work in progress with whatever actors, actresses, or singers I may be crushing on at the time.

Because friends of mine started writing, and I found myself looking at them and going "why am I not doing that?"

But mostly, because I like it.

Writing! It's an extention of...

[vespican.livejournal.com]

...reading, I think. I've always believed that I write because I read. In fact, it was because I got back to reading a few years ago that I got into writing again. I was near the end of C. S. Forester's Hornblower series (reading them for the first time in order of Hornblower's life and career) when it occurred to me that I should revive and revise a story that I had written while in high-school. Like many of the respondants to this post, I found that as I got into adult life, the chance to write seemed to fade away as responsibilities invaded my everyday life. For many years I lived with the idea that "someday" I'd get back to it. Starting to read on a regular basis once more, I guess provided that "someday."
Dave

[elizabeth-welsh.livejournal.com]

Because if I didn't I would burst. Even so, when time is scarce, sometimes I just can't and then I have all the personality of a badger, just ask my hubby. I know I'm in trouble when he begs me to write.

"Harold*, your socks are on the floor again. Do I have to post it that the garbage needs emptied even when it is overflowing?" And then begins the "I hate this" phase. "I hate this too small house. I hate that we have too much stuff."

He always relinquishes the computer and says, "Please, write. Now."

So one could argue I write because it is so much cheaper and easier than divorce. *smirk*

---
* Probably he knows he's in for it by the first word. I almost never call him by his real name unless I'm mad. Our son has figured out that we have other names besides Mommy and Daddy. He has introduced us to people as Beth and Love.