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On Why I Write
Posted as a note on my Facebook account. Archived here.
Like Orwell, from a very early age, when I first started having books read to me (and understood them as something more than a jumble of sounds from my mother), I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Like Orwell, I frequently tried to abandon this idea, wanting to be a CID officer when I was 9 (and realizing that I couldn't run after criminals) and then a lawyer from ages 14-16, but at beneath the surface, I was always simmering with the greatest urge to write. I played with childish fanfiction romances, I wrote schoolplays, I wrote letters to my imaginary boyfriend aged 16, tall, dark, with a rougish wink and rapier wit.
Orwell goes onto say, which resonates deeply within me:
I write for all these reasons, perhaps reason one the most and many more.
I write with a sense of desperation because I do not have a voice that I feel comfortable with. I am not the sort who loves hearing their own voice in class - or anywhere else for that matter - I sit, I brood, I occasionally think. But most of the time I am pathologically silent. There is something probably wrong with me, as there is something wrong with everyone else, but writing - writing this - makes me able to speak with the world and imagine that someone out there is wililng to listen to this small feeble voice. And this is why I write.
Aside from more nobler causes like wanting to give a voice to others who might not be heard, I write for the simplest and perhaps most selfish reason: I want to be heard. I do not need to be remembered, but I wish, the way man careens off into the stars in search for some life - any life - out there, for some fragment of my voice to be heard. And that is why I transcribe my voice into words, leave it on the internet, picture them in poems, solidify their and my existence in waterproof ink.
I write because it pushes me to do things that I would never else would do. Like my silly romance stories with horrible characterization. Or my pair of poems about eating bodies. Or going out and actually talking to people to write stories for newspaper. Talking to people that I like, talking to people that I vehemently dislike. Writing about things that annoy me, writing things that I am hopelessly passionate about. Things that I are out of my very big comfort zone. Situations which I would otherwise, never want to put myself into. It makes me conquer myself.
For the longest of time, I thought that I would be content with simply writing. "As long as I can write for a living - whatever it may be - I will be happy." So I have churned, article after article, essay after essay, poem after poem, story after story, but I still feel empty. What am I writing, who am I writing for, why am I writing? I no longer contained that overzealous lust to see my words on a page, glistening with fresh ink or screaming out to me with emboldened tyopgraphy.
Lately, I have come to the conclusion that I will never find satifsaction in my writing with that mindset. Is it the right way to think, I do not know. But I feel it in my bones, that if I cannot find my writing I might as well be better off not writing at all.
But I still forge ahead. I cannot say "no" this easily, not yet. Until the marrow of my bones are sucked clean from ink blotters, I will continue. Even if I have to eke out every word in pain. Otherwise, I will never be heard. I will never ever tell anyone anything, share with anyone anything, feel things with anyone.
Why do I write?
Why not?
Like Orwell, from a very early age, when I first started having books read to me (and understood them as something more than a jumble of sounds from my mother), I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Like Orwell, I frequently tried to abandon this idea, wanting to be a CID officer when I was 9 (and realizing that I couldn't run after criminals) and then a lawyer from ages 14-16, but at beneath the surface, I was always simmering with the greatest urge to write. I played with childish fanfiction romances, I wrote schoolplays, I wrote letters to my imaginary boyfriend aged 16, tall, dark, with a rougish wink and rapier wit.
Orwell goes onto say, which resonates deeply within me:
(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.
(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.
(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
I write for all these reasons, perhaps reason one the most and many more.
I write with a sense of desperation because I do not have a voice that I feel comfortable with. I am not the sort who loves hearing their own voice in class - or anywhere else for that matter - I sit, I brood, I occasionally think. But most of the time I am pathologically silent. There is something probably wrong with me, as there is something wrong with everyone else, but writing - writing this - makes me able to speak with the world and imagine that someone out there is wililng to listen to this small feeble voice. And this is why I write.
Aside from more nobler causes like wanting to give a voice to others who might not be heard, I write for the simplest and perhaps most selfish reason: I want to be heard. I do not need to be remembered, but I wish, the way man careens off into the stars in search for some life - any life - out there, for some fragment of my voice to be heard. And that is why I transcribe my voice into words, leave it on the internet, picture them in poems, solidify their and my existence in waterproof ink.
I write because it pushes me to do things that I would never else would do. Like my silly romance stories with horrible characterization. Or my pair of poems about eating bodies. Or going out and actually talking to people to write stories for newspaper. Talking to people that I like, talking to people that I vehemently dislike. Writing about things that annoy me, writing things that I am hopelessly passionate about. Things that I are out of my very big comfort zone. Situations which I would otherwise, never want to put myself into. It makes me conquer myself.
For the longest of time, I thought that I would be content with simply writing. "As long as I can write for a living - whatever it may be - I will be happy." So I have churned, article after article, essay after essay, poem after poem, story after story, but I still feel empty. What am I writing, who am I writing for, why am I writing? I no longer contained that overzealous lust to see my words on a page, glistening with fresh ink or screaming out to me with emboldened tyopgraphy.
Lately, I have come to the conclusion that I will never find satifsaction in my writing with that mindset. Is it the right way to think, I do not know. But I feel it in my bones, that if I cannot find my writing I might as well be better off not writing at all.
But I still forge ahead. I cannot say "no" this easily, not yet. Until the marrow of my bones are sucked clean from ink blotters, I will continue. Even if I have to eke out every word in pain. Otherwise, I will never be heard. I will never ever tell anyone anything, share with anyone anything, feel things with anyone.
Why do I write?
Why not?
no subject
nicely written ba! especially the last phrase, it really leaves an emotional punch :)