Why I Write

I guess I write for a lot of reasons. Some of them are noble, and some of them are terribly vain. I write for myself and I write for others. Sometimes I write simply to feel better. These are the most important reasons that I write.

Identity

Writing, to me, is an act of self-exploration and self-expression. It is a gateway to some part of me which otherwise might not exist. In essence, I am someone else on this page; someone I am only capable of becoming alone, on empty pages. I am a shy introvert, and I feel most myself when I write, and least myself when I'm trapped in conversations I'm not enjoying. Sometimes I feel my grasp on who I am simply fading away, and I am all of a sudden a dumb, mute, bewildered nonentity. But not here. Not now.

When my eyes cloud over and I can't take in another word, some part of me is asking, who am I? And when the words flow easily from my fingertips, some part of me is screaming, this is Me!

It's a kind of existential fracking, and a harness for my identity.

This is not an uncommon sentiment for writers. In the introduction to his brilliant study of “Negro Music in White America,” Blues People, Amiri Baraka wrote:

Writing this book confirmed ideas that had been rolling around in my head for years and that now, given the opportunity, flashed out upon the page with with a stunning self-exhilaration and certainty. The book, from its opening words, got me high. It made me reach for more and more and more of what I had carried for years, for more of what I had to say, for more of my self.

In a letter to a high school English class, Kurt Vonnegut urged the young to write a poem and simply tear to pieces and discard it:

You will find out that you have already been gloriously rewarded for you poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what's inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

The recurrence of this theme probably has something to do with the illusory nature of thought, as something that needs to be corralled. But I often feel like my head is a peculiarly bewildering and hazy place to be. The image that comes to mind is of that ridiculous novelty of the 20th century in which a person enters a glass box and cash begins fluttering wildly about. They clutch as much as they can to them and are allowed to keep their haul. Only in the case of writing, it’s little post it notes on which are scrawled the million thoughts and feelings that flutter about my brain, some of them crystal clear, others formless intuition, many of them in mutual contradiction. And I’m desperately pasting them to one of the glass walls, rereading the from left to right, top to bottom, each time a new note is captured; rearranging them to accommodate new thoughts; discarding those which have been rendered insensible; trying, finally, to bring forth order from a hurricane of little yellow scraps of paper.

The metaphor is overly-dramatic (it’s not quite as difficult as all that), but apt.

Ego, Vanity

It's also a kind of inarticulate yearning - for a place, a mood, a person, for understanding, for belonging, for something - I don't really know.

Sometimes I think this might be the impulse which drives all great writers: people are beautiful, and writers are so often not. Not unless we write. I write best when I fall in love with pretty girls who seem to have had double helpings of charisma while I laid staring at the sky some formative day. And now, here I am, laboriously trying to match the simple poetry of their being. This, an empty page, is the only place I'll ever be half as beautiful as they are. I can compose; they are compositions. I agonize over words when they can simply smile.

Political Purpose

Most importantly, I write because I believe I have something to say. I want to change the way people think about the world, and about how they relate to their fellow humans. I want a better world, and I write in pursuit of that goal. I write for human freedom, for human happiness, for love and for redemption.

All my life I have met sad and beautiful people. Many of them were just about ready to quit. All of them seemed to be missing something. They fill me with a desperate urge to help, to relieve, to uplift. I write a lot for them. Or try to, anyway.