Writers, what drives you to write?
Early this morning I was doing some self-examination, questioning my motives as an indie author and blogger. How much of crafting words on a page and uploading for the world to see is about my own manufactured self-importance? Do I have a suffering need to be read? And if true, is this necessarily all-bad?
Or, perhaps the reason that we—and I—write is a compelling need to change others, or at least present ideas and situations that inspire them to consider changing. I wonder whether I am following Gandhi’s wisdom, however, and first attempting to “be the change I want to see in the world.”
Third, writing might simply be grounded in a writer’s need to express his self or herself. Each of us—whether we call ourselves writers or not—is a voice yearning to be heard by others. Some of us will have a healthy, up-close cluster of those who actively listen to us and empathize on a daily basis, and others will not. Whatever form it happens to take, positive or negative, everyone will be heard at some point.
Finally, perhaps the drive to write is all caught up in the love of creating a story—the sheer joy of the act itself.
And when I consider why I write novels, this appears to me as my greatest motivator. I love experiencing and creating, being the consumer and the artist.
In fact, if you’re like me, you have no choice but to swim in the imaginary river that floats between your ears and attempt to cascade ripples downstream to the concrete world that surrounds us. How is this true for you, please?
