Why Do We Write?

[DavidDvorkin]

This is my contribution to an old discussion:

http://www.dvorkin.com/essays/whywewrite_d.html

I gave a short talk about this to a local Mensa chapter, and afterwards I realized that I had much more to say. So, having my own Web site, I said it.

My wife was inspired to write on the same subject from her somewhat different point of view. When she's finished her essay, I'll post it, as well, so that we'll a nice contrast and balance on the site.

[hyphenate]

1. Why do we write?

I was in third grade when I started to write. My earliest items were short poems, with nothing other than disarming pieces with rhymes older and more cliched than dirt. We can't really expect too much from an 8 year old, I guess. One of my first teachers, though, understood why I write, though, and was one of the first teachers who also understood the connection between writing and reading. When I moved away from that school, she gave me a copy of "Call of the Wild" which I cherished for many years, and always reminded me that adventures such as this could be all mine--even if it were only in my own mind.

Why do I write? Because writing takes me on trips to places and scenes which I may never know other than as something in my own mind. It brings me to faraway locales where fantasy and reality combine in ways that they never could elsewhere. It brings me to situations and circumstances that will never surface otherwise in my everyday existence. It allows me to ask questions which will never be answered, but will never be forgotten. It opens my mind to accept that I am only a small piece of an infinite universe, and that every other person in this world and beyond has many of the same questions, the same yearnings and the same joys and griefs that I have.

I write because I want to share. I write because I love the people I create, even if many of them are not perfect, even if the idea is not as fresh or as new as others. I write because I have something to say, and I'm not shy about stating it.

There are as many reasons as to why people write as there are people writing. We each come from a different place, and taking on a writing project gives us a chance to throw in our own voice--our own opinion about the subject we are writing about.

I write because I can. Because my voice isn't shackled, it isn't held in solitary by evil people, nor am I afraid to make it heard.

I think most of us write because we just want to be respected for something which we love to do, and which comes easily to some of us.

[DavidDvorkin]

2. You were lucky to have that teacher

Most of mine didn't want me to write overly fanciful stuff or silly humor. I'm glad the drive was strong enough in me to survive them.

[hyphenate]

3. Believe me,

there were others who weren't so good. One teacher in an actual "creative writing" class used to give me lower marks than other students whose work was nowhere near as good as mine. The reason? She said it was because I was more talented and thus she had to "be harder" on me. She said she gave the others higher marks because they were doing "their best" and I should be, too.

I hated her. And to be quite honest, a part of me got crushed because of her.