Why Do We Write?
Being a writer means being plagued all the time with the question. Because doubt causes self-inflicted wounds to our words.
A Little Motivational Exercise for Writers
Our writing comes from deep inside where it ferociously slams its way through the muck and goo of our every self-conscious knife of insecurity to make it to the surface.
We write for so many reasons.
But we also don’t write for many more.
It’s important to explore all those reasons.
I don’t write because:
- In the 2nd grade my father read my first novel and put it in his trunk. What if that’s the only recognition I get?
- I dressed up like Laura Ingalls every single day of the fourth grade, even carried my lunch in a pail. At the end of the school year, my teacher said, “That’s so weird. Why do you do it?”
- the boys in tin high school told me I was geeky and would never fit in. What if they’re right?
- On the first day of a creative writing class at Tennessee Tech, the professor took one look at my poem and moved on to someone else. Permanently.
- My mother told me to do something more practical. I joined the military.
But I do write because:
- My father framed that first novel.
- The Poetry Society at Tennessee Tech created an anthology and asked me if they could publish the last poem I wrote for that creative writing class.
- The first nonfiction short story I wrote was published. In an anthology on women’s views of the war.
- My father told me to quit the military and write for a living. He was adamant I could do it. Then he died.
You have reasons you don’t write but you have many more reasons you do.
Take both, they are a part of you and mold them into a motivator.
Together we will succeed because we all have something important within us to say.
Do it for yourself and do it for anyone whose heart you might touch.