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Why Write?
An elegant question asked by Misty Massey in her 2009 blog post. I was about to bop by it looking for today’s Magical Words, because everyone knows the answer “I write because I have to”, when I hit the showstopper in the comments by Phiala (Sarah Goslee), which made me think:
“Even many successful writers say that they write because they have to, and often go on to say that you SHOULDN’T write unless you have to. That leads to self-doubt, at least in me. I don’t have to write, so maybe I shouldn’t be doing it?
But I have stories to tell!”
Honestly, I don’t have to write. It’s one of the reasons I often go months without putting hands-on-keyboard for fictional purposes.
I have to read. Honest-to-goodness simple must. When I feel the edges creep in of the mad world, I go into a Fiction Fit and swallow three books at a time. A hundred books in a year. Year after year after year.
And I tell myself stories. Fanfiction from television, movies, and books. True-to-life speculations and wild tales. New stories. Old stories. Revisits, revision. At least one “novel” a week, and several “short stories”.
Some of them are really, really good, and I want to share them.
If you would like to see the whole Magical Words post with comments: http://www.magicalwords.net/misty-massey/why-write/
Why do you write?