"What do you do to stay motivated, to keep a
steady belief in yourself and your writing? There’s a
persistent voice in my head asking ‘what’s the point,’ and what are you going
to do with all these words anyway?"
These words appeared on my screen yesterday in an email from a friend and I have been thinking about them ever since. Why do I write?
There have been many answers to this question through the centuries, so I thought about some of the classic responses I've heard or read, and the very first thing that jumped into my head was, "Because I must."
Did you just roll your eyes? Me, too. But since it popped so insistently into my head yesterday, I gently put it aside for consideration and carried on.
My writing started with a simple desire to process. After the most intense period of teaching in my life, I began to write my memories, feelings, impressions, lessons . . . and before you know it, it was starting to look and feel like a book. I was a writer! Creative non-fiction, mostly. Ways to process my own experience and clarify for myself, who I am and where I fit into the grand scheme. E.M Forster summed it up for me: How can I tell what I think until I see what I say?
Slowly, my tastes wandered into fiction.
My fictional characters have taught me as much about my life as the real people in it. We are all mirrors for one another. When someone rubs me the wrong way, I take a closer look because, inevitably, the thing that bugs me about them is something that bugs me about myself.
Every time I bring one of the voices in my head to life (I heard it, you know what I mean), that new character has a little of me somewhere in them. Yes, even the villains. Especially the villains.
Every character is a chance to take a real close look at that fascinating connection between experience, thoughts, feelings, and behaviour.
Here's a little example of what I mean. I wrote a young adult novel with a fifteen year old protagonist who loses her dad to cancer. That scenario mirrors my own life. In early writing group explorations, I kept getting negative feedback about the main character. People didn't connect with her; they liked her friend better. No-one could quite put their finger on why. It took me a long time to suss it out: I was writing that kid with a very real chip on my shoulder. I was giving her ample opportunity to grieve normally, act out, be a normal teenager.
And I was annoyed with her.
Somewhere deep inside me a voice whispered, Just suck it up, Kiddo. I had to. I was impatient with her acting her age. And it was wrecking my writing. I had to go back and do some work around my own fifteen year old self - a lot of work, actually. And then, the writing changed.
I think it is safe to say that I have learned something about myself through almost every piece of writing I've done.
I certainly don't think that is every writer's experience, but it is mine. Writing is my Sociology, Psychology, and Theology studies, all in one.
So why is this important for me?
That leads me to the Big One: Why Are We Here?
The best answer I can find for that age-old question comes from the Dalai Lama: We are here to be happy. I don't think he's talking about the "happy" we're being sold by North American culture; the one that's all about "fun". I think he's talking about real joy.
I'm all in for that.
Visualize a world where everyone is happy. Content. Satisfied with what they have. Full of love. Can you see that world? It's so different from the mess we've made.
So, next question: Is it possible to be truly happy if you don't really know yourself? If you don't understand yourself? I'm thinking . . . nope.
So, if I want to change the world, I must be happy. If I want to be happy, I must understand myself. To understand myself - and this is just MY way - I must write.
Why do I write?
Because I must.
