Why Do I Write?

[from Writing Down the Bones © 1986, 2005 by Natalie Goldberg, p122, 123:]

---"Why do I write?" It's a good question. Ask it of yourself every once in a while. No answer will make you stop writing, and over time you will find that you have given every response.

…

---Writing has tremendous energy. If you find a reason for it, any reason, it seems that rather than negate the act of writing, it makes you burn deeper and glow clearer on the page. Ask yourself, "Why do I write?" or "Why do I want to write?," but don't think about it. Take pen and paper and answer it with clear, assertive statements. Every statement doesn't have to be 100 percent true and each line can contradict the others. Even lie if you need to, to get going. If you don't know why you write, answer it as though you do know why.


[The first time i thought anything much about writing as a career, it was during some study session in "The Cocktail Lounge" in Uris Library at Cornell, my freshman year.  (But it's a memory with the quality of a dream, like something recalled from my time in the womb.) Really, i was just daydreaming, probably procrastinating a physics problem set or something. I was so naïve; i thought idly that it would be easy, making stuff up (because i was thinking about writing fiction, which i was reading a lot of instead of studying). But it's not easy, as i was to find out.  And i do recommend Writing Down the Bones for anyone thinking about writing; it's work, but it helps with the discipline.

Take care, gentle reader; enjoy the rain if it's raining or the sun if it's shining.]