Sometimes, when I’m in the midst of writing a story, I stop and think, “Why am I writing this? Who’s going to read this? Will they like it if I let them read it? Will I let anyone read this? WHY WHY WHY do I do this?!”
I don’t get paid to write. Most of what I write goes unread by others. These blog posts are sometimes read, I think. But I write these posts for myself, so that I can read them in the future and marvel at my dorkiness or whatever. On rare occasions I’m actually astonished by what I’ve written, usually in the vein of “What the hell was I thinking?!”
For a long time, I wrote a poem everyday. Every day for I think about eight years I wrote a poem a day. Granted, some (a lot?) were haikus but still, they required that I think in a creative manner. I found it a great challenge on some days and other days the words just flowed almost without a thought. Sometimes I miss being that creative.
Nowadays, I write my stories. I don’t know if I’ve given up on the whole sci-fi epic (I haven’t, not really) but I’ve concentrated on romance stories of varying length. I really loved the short stories/novellas I wrote a couple of years ago but right now I’m going for the 50,000 words or more. And I always try to do National Novel Writing Month because I LOVE knowing that I’ll have a novel by the end of it. My longest one was from 2014 and that’s a story I still love to this day. Truth be told, I generally love all my stories.
So, to the question, why do I write?
1) The Boys – More often than not, the men in my stories are played by my current fellas. I don’t know if I write to work out my crushes or if I write to give my crushes something to do. Either way, it’s interesting and funny to me when I think, “Oh, Henry is playing this one. Sully is playing that one. Kitsch played that one. Philip plays this one.” I figure, I like the fellas. Why not have them doing something besides singing or acting in the “real world.” Right? Right. So I write.
2) Talking in my head – I hear voices in my head. No, not really. But I do hear my characters and their lives in my head. Sometimes they’re very insistent and demand that I give them their due. So I write.
3) Music and Books – It is a rare day indeed in which I do not listen to some piece of music. And more often than not, a song can inspire a scene and that scene can inspire story. Books remind me of the parts of a story and good books fire up emotions. I want to elicit the same thing. So I write.
4) Escape – The world can be rather chaotic and insane. Just as I read or listen to music sometimes for escape, so too when I’m crafting a story. Even if it’s just for me, it gives me focus on something other than the insanity. So I write.
I write because I must. I write because I can’t imagine not writing. Now whether or not anyone ends up reading any of my stuff is another story…