Why we write
 

On Wednesday I had the opportunity to attend the Writers Digest Book Expo America Conference in NYC. When I got there I realized I was vastly underdressed, having never been to one. Everyone had suits and sport jackets on and there I was in jeans and a damn North Face. It was a lot more of a formal occasion than I thought, with the keynote delivered by Karen Slaughter. All of the panels were educational writing workshops focusing on different aspects of writing, like creating deeper characters or fixing plot holes. But, there was one common theme that all of the featured authors stressed more than anything else...

All writers are idiots.

Because if we knew what we were getting into, or the odds we were against, we wouldn't be writing. 95% of all written works in the US never see the light of day and of that 5%, 97% of those never sell more than 10,000 copies.

Yeah, there were many collective moans.

But, more than that, they stressed another point. Every person who was dedicated and passionate about there work would be published in the end in some form or another. The entire con served as an immense ego boost. At the end they had their big event, the "Pitch Slam", which I thought was ridiculously awesome. For the two hours after the con they sit 70 agents from various genres in an auditorium and you have three minutes in front of as many as you can make it to to convince them that your work is worth a look, the goal being to get the coveted "request for material".

Of course I had nothing to offer, I just stuck around mostly to watch and get ready for next year. :cool:

Anyway, with the immense odds against, the economy in tatters, and more and more publishing houses dropping authors, why are we writers so damn stubborn? All of the authors at the con agreed that it was because they "just have to." It's like a drug. Or an OCD.

Cause just telling people your stories takes too long!

I have no god damn idea why I write, which is probably why I'm so on-and-off about it.

I write because if I didn't find some way to put all these great character ideas and scenes onto paper or at least get them out of my damn head I'd go insane. Also I get a huge thrill whenever I pass it off to friends and family and they react in ways I like.

I write because the characters would get pissed at me if I don't. I live in fear of that day they get fed up with me...

Because I can.

That's it.

Every other trade or craft, you're probably inclined to do because you're good at it, because you have ample opportunity, because you need the money or some other sound reason. I believe we're inexorably compelled to tell stories for no other reason than it's at all possible for us to.

We were very much ruled by our imagination as late as 3 000 years ago, compelled by voices that we named gods; I submit that this is still the case. Not the hearing voices part (unless you're schizophrenic), but being slaves to imagination.

I write so I can go to sleep at night. It helps a lot, but at the same time I also feel my writing suffers for it, because I'm tired.

The first problem I have is being too harsh of a critic. I generally like what I write at the time that I write it, but anytime I look over something later I really can't stand it, and it kind of kills further ambition for that work.

Second big problem is flip-flopping too much on what I want to write. I always want to capture some kind of scene and mood that just seems to fit so well with another story, and then I start writing that. As time passes, I can tell my ideas are being culled down to a select few ideas that seem to persist, stuff that has concrete themes instead of the fan fiction dribble I produced through high school that all boiled down to "lolz my guy is badass, no time for plot: he's busy doing totally badass things!"

For the same reason there are so many songs about rainbows.

It's a funny thing, writing was my first and only passion for a long time, but somehow I lost interest for a while. It's still there, and I'm slowly coming back to it (now that I'm at a point of re-evaluating my life), but it's a lot more bittersweet. I'm concerned about money--even success in the sense of regularly having things published probably won't be enough to live on--but I also figure that I'd rather fail at something I actually like for a change.

Not much for prose anymore, though. I've always been more interested in script writing.

My mum is a professional authour and I used to write and won a lot of awards, both of us just because we had ideas we had to get out.
I don't anymore, however, mostly because I've found a new passion in research which I enjoy even more. So it's just being passionate about it.
i don't feel it anymore and I can't simply write anymore.

I write because the story demands that someone other than me knows how it goes.

I write because there's nothing quite like creating, crafting, and controlling an entire universe inside a single person's imagination. As an addendum to that, I also write because I only create, craft and control as much as I am created, crafted, and controlled myself, by the story. Often, the tale itself, and the tale's teller, are on equal terms regarding who is in charge.

Have you ever written something, and it started out feeling like a God Complex power trip, only to have had your own creations exercising Free Will to counter the Fate you crafted for them?

... ... That's a metaphor, don't call the nut house on me. Not for this, at least.

Lastly, I write because I'm still trying to find the answer to the topic question: Why do I write?

I never want to find out.

...

That all came out much more dramatic than I'd intended.