While I prepare to take off to the big city at the end of the month to begin my university education, I thought I would take the opportunity to host one of my favourite bloggers, JeffO, for a guest-post. Well, here you all go!
First off, thank you, Bonnee, for hosting
me this week. I've never been to Australia
So, I'm here because Bonnee asked a
question on her blog, and after getting the right answer I was obnoxious and
asked, "What do I win?" The joke's on me, because I get to write a
post about why I write, and that's a heck of a lot tougher than shipping off
the first ten pages of a manuscript for critique, or getting a cute little blog
button or something like that. Be careful what you wish for, right? The joke
may really be on Bonnee, though,
because I never know what I'm going to write until I start, and now that I have,
I'm not entirely sure I can even answer the question properly. In the interest
of international relations, I'd better do my best to answer the question, or
Bonnee may drop a funnel-web spider in my luggage or something.
Why do I write? I could give some glib
answer of the sort you see on writing forums all the time: "The voices
tell me so." Or the ever-popular "If I don't, my head will explode,"
but that would be a lie. My brain is not so overstufffed with brilliance or
stories or characters that the only way to let stuff out is to write. I don't
have constant conversations with characters, though I do frequently have
narratives running in my head.
I'm also not one of those people who writes
to work shit out (can I say that here? Bonnee: Yes, yes you can.). A good friend in my writer's group
wears her heart on her sleeve; you can always
tell what's on her mind based on her week-to-week writing. Me, I'm not so
transparent. Real-life events work into my stories, but they're touchstones and
starting points, places to depart from. They color my characters a bit, but my
characters aren't used to relive my life, or to live out my dreams.
As I mentioned in a post I did for a
bloghop some time
ago, I was once an avid fiction writer. In sixth grade, I was going to be a
novelist, period. That lasted for about a year, then went dormant for many,
many years, I don't know why. I also don't know what woke it up, but about four
years ago, it did, especially after my father passed away. Growing up, my life
was pretty normal. I wasn't abused physically, sexually, or mentally. I got
along with my brother and sister about as well as brothers and sisters get
along, which is to say, alternating between horrible and great. I'm not writing
to exorcise demons or deal with childhood trauma, because there aren't any. I do
believe, however, there is a connection between my father's death and the
re-emergence of my writing. During the three months or so he was seriously ill,
and in the five or six months after his death, I spent so much time with other
people — doctors and nurses, my brother and sister, aunts and uncles and
cousins — that, when it was finally over, I needed 'headspace'. I sort of
retreated into myself a bit, and came back up with fiction-writer me, raring to
go. I can't say for sure why, but I'm glad I reconnected.
And that brings me to another part of it.
Fiction writing is just plain fun, dammit. I like creating characters and
manipulating words into (hopefully) coherent sentences, paragraphs, and stories.
I like discovering a story where there was none, finding meaning in. I like the
thrill of writing something good, that feeling of "Damn, I nailed it!" that comes when
everything goes right, and I like crafting, too, where you take that still raw
sort of story and shape it into something even better. I even like writing when
the words tangle on the way out and don't make any sense at all, when you spend
half your time trying to decipher what you meant. It's hard, but still fun.
Humans need for creativity. We need some
kind of artistic outlet in our lives. Art enriches us, and not just when we
receive it, but when we create it, too. It gives us a way to express ourselves; a way to interpret the world outside AND
the world inside. Sometimes it helps us deal with our shit, and sometimes it
allows us to express things that can't be expressed in other ways. For me,
writing is the way to do this, because I'm clumsy and self-conscious as a
dancer, have a terrible singing voice, and can't play music to save my life.
Hey, it looks like I found a way to answer
the question after all. Hopefully, I didn't ramble too much and bore you all to
death. Thanks for hosting me, Bonnee, time to go back stateside. Let me just
check my luggage before I go…looks good. Before I go, I guess I should ask the
question of all you out there: Why do YOU write?
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