I haven’t formally addressed this question since Lisa Goldfarb’s class in college, almost twenty years ago. Clearly it is time to circle back to it.
My first answer is not all that interesting – I write because I want to. Because something inside of me has always wanted to, has felt even through the many years when I wasn’t putting pen to page, that I am a writer.
I write because it’s hard. Because I spend half my time, at least, talking myself into sitting down to start and staring at blank pages and feeling like I can’t write or don’t know what or how. Both of these – the what and the how – seem immanently more interesting than the why, by the way. Because staring that blankness down is good for me, because doing things that come easily and have clear-cut right answers is only superficially satisfying. Because something in me has always craved the gray area, no matter how uncomfortable it can be, no matter how much I also like the black and white.
I write because Mr. Edelson in fourth grade told me I should try to publish some of my stories. And I always liked pleasing the people in authority. Until I stopped liking it. But that’s another story. I still think of finding Mr. E when my first work gets published. Of sending him a copy. Maybe of dedicating part of it to him or at least giving him a line in the acknowledgements.
I write because it feels like I have to. Like if I don’t, some vital part of me will be lost or fall sleep and not be fully alive. Like I will not be truly myself if I don’t. Like it is one of the things tethering me to this world, helping me walk through it with a modicum of grace and sanity and compassion.
I write because I’ve found that when I go past the point where I think I’ve answered the question, past the point where I think I figured it out and have to fill the next line anyway, past the first attempt, the first draft, the first words that come easily, that is when and where I find the good stuff, the better stuff, the real-er stuff of my self and of life. That the opportunity for, the necessity of, constant revision is what allows me to find the story I want to tell myself, and the story I want to tell about myself.
I write because the blank line is an invitation – a gathering I want to be a part of, an event it would be rude to decline. A beckoning or a summoning to parts of me that are waiting to emerge. Waiting to see the light.
I write because the sand is still streaming through the small aperture in the hourglass. I write because my time is not yet up. I write because I do not fully know myself. And because it is impossible to fully know other people.
I write because it makes me feel accomplished. And every now and then because it makes me feel joy.
I write because I have always been fascinated with words – their essential and fickle nature, their playfulness and treachery, their power and impotence. Because they are all the things at once. Because they are what we, what I, make of them.
