WHY DO YOU WRITE?

I've quoted from writer-ecologist Susan J.Tweit's blog, Walking Nature Home, on my GriefGlow blog before. This quotation on writing is from her January 24, 2010 post on decluttering and reclarifying her life. Not very recent, I'll admit, but as I read it again now I'm struck by how wise and grounded it is.

Susan writes:

I guess writing is always a journey of faith. Sometimes I allow myself to tense up with fear and I can't quite discern my way. I blunder about, stumble, or race in circles. When I realize I've gone wrong, I stop, collect myself, and start anew.


Just as today I uncluttered my shelves, dusted my office, and in the doing, remembered what it is that I love about my work. Why I write: To think, to dream, to share my love of life, to light the darkness that lurks around the edges of this world. Writing is my way of living with my heart outstretched as if it were my hand. (Thank you, singer/songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter!)


Put simply: Writing is how I love this world.

As a writer, teacher, and blogger, I'm often engaged in sharing thoughts about the business end of writing. Indeed, my post for tomorrow's Touchy Topics Tuesday is on the financial aspects of a book contract. But important as it is to be savvy about planning and sales and everything that comes in between, it's just as important to remember why we write in the first place.

When we forget why we write, burnout becomes inevitable; bitterness and envy may follow as well, like radioactive cherries on an already toxic cake. When we forget why we write, we end up focusing only on the tough parts of a writerly career—the competition, the uncertainty, the ups and downs (or downs and downs) of the money. The joy of creation, the love of language, the lure of story, the bliss that is honing a beloved craft get lost.

Why do you write?

It's worth asking yourself that. And posting the answer someplace near your desk.

I write because I love the variety, the playfulness, the plasticity of language. Because books seem to me to be among the world's most enduring tools of transformation. Because I believe, oh how I believe, in the power of bearing witness to one's truth, whatever that truth might be. Because once a story gets hold of me, I have trouble focusing on anything else. Because writing is just plain fun.

Those reasons sound corny, I know. Your own reasons may be different, or better.

It doesn't matter what they are. It just matters that you know them.