Aly Hawkins

My friend Alex has been blogging (part 1, part 2) about why he writes. In Part 1, he invites his readers to tell him why we write, and I’ve been thinking about the question since last week. My initial mental response was, Um . . . because it’s there? Like Mt. Everest?, but on the heels of that thought, I remembered that “because it’s there” can get you killed.

I’m not clear on why having a reason is important, but I admit that I’ve become just the teensiest bit obsessed with sussing out a good answer. (Thanks, Alex. Because I don’t have enough to obsess about right now.) After some soul-searching, I’ve decided that I have a three quasi-compelling reasons:

1. I write because I love, love, love words—how they look, how they taste, how they change each other, just like people do. Actually, my feelings about words are quite similar to my feelings about people: I like most of them just for existing. There are some I can’t stand (moist! phlegmatic! Weimaraner! blistered!). And there are a few I adore beyond all reason (recidivism! sacralizing! persnickety! sh*tsticks!).

2. I write because I love good stories. Give me character, conflict, choice, climax and conclusion—or creatively (and deliberately) suspend one or more of these elements to assassinate the prototype, thereby telling another story—and I’m yours forever. Very few things please me more than telling a good tale—painting portraits of the characters, building the action, embroidering details (for laughs or for tension), timing the climax and reveal—and each story I write adds tools to my bag of tricks for the next good one.

3. I write to work stuff out. My brain is a shockingly disordered place, chock-full of thought fragments and half-thunk ideas that have little hope of becoming whole because there is not a linear path to be found in the dim labyrinth of my grey matter. Writing is my way of chopping a trail through the jungle of my mind, opening a navigable path for notions that would otherwise perish in the weeds. Here’s the rub: Not all notions are deserving of the light of day. But I often can’t tell the difference between valuable ideas and embarrassing abstractions until they both make it out of my brainpan and onto the page. (Potential embarrassment hasn’t, until now, been an imminent risk: I’ve yarked in my journal or on my computer, and then picked over what ideas to share with a wider audience. Blogging, however, is a bit riskier. I wouldn’t be at all shocked if, in the not-too-distant future, I write something outrageous, nonsensical and patently untrue. If and when that day comes, I hope you three will help me stop the insanity rather than beating me with meerkats.)

And in case you’re wondering—yes, writing this post helped me work out why I write.

Filed under: writing Tagged: | creative writing, reasons for writing, storytelling, wordplay