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Why am I a writer? Why should I write? What is a writer? Who are, and who are not, writers?
"All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things." "Just do it, baby!" are the words of Al Davis, a National Football League team owner, who didn’t really care how his team got it done, as long as they won. A writer must have that same attitude, or he will perish under the pressure of the obstacles and barriers of our chosen profession. But that attitude alone will still not be enough without the commitment to continually improve our craft. It is this commitment that separates us from the ‘writers’ who do only shopping lists and messages to the mail carrier."Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel as if I should be doing something else." -Gloria Steinem"The way you define yourself, as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything."
Why do I write? Better to ask, "Why do I awaken in the morning?" Or better still, "Why do I breathe?"
I don’t believe I could ‘not write,’ any more easily than I could decide not to wake up in the morning. It seems almost incomprehensible to imagine myself even looking at my own writing, or that of someone else for that matter, without thinking about how it is written, and how I could improve it.
I used to be a pretty good swimmer, and I could hold my breath for several consecutive laps under water. But when I was swimming away there at the bottom of the pool, trying for a new personal record, I knew I was going to have to come up sooner or later. I knew I could force myself to ‘not breathe’ for only so long before I would risk some sort of damage, or pass out. I knew I could not live much longer without breathing.
I have only one more quote to share. Gustave Flaubert is quoted as saying,
If for some reason I were suddenly forced to abandon being a writer, I would fear for my health. I would be risking some sort of damage. I would be holding my breath for far too long. I would be wondering when I would pass out. And I would know that never again would I awaken in the morning.
Ó 2005, Dan Cooper
"Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living." If it turns out that somehow I have deluded myself, that I am fooling myself, that I am pretending to be a writer, then I think I can probably live with that discovery. I can live with it so long as I am permitted to keep writing as I live my delusion. I am Flaubert’s dog.
Writers face many obstacles, from attitudes like the one just presented, to those that emerge from within the writer, herself. The best way I have found to clear these hurdles is to keep writing.
Commitment to improve is the difference. It is why we spend so much time on this thing that ‘everybody’ does. It is why we think we can call ourselves writers. Without the commitment to improve, all this time spent would make us nothing more than catalog clerks or statisticians. While continued practice, and the resulting time spent, do tend to improve our writing, it is not so much the amount of time but the commitment to do it better, which helps define us.
So, the real question is not why we write. The crucial question is why we spend so much of our energy on it. And the answer, of course, includes the fact that it feels good. It feels good because it is what we want to do. It feels good and it feels natural.
And it feels rewarding to know that perhaps there may be something left behind when we leave this ball of dirt we call Earth. ‘Publish or perish,’ is the cry in academia, to presumably differentiate the scholars who will be remembered from the rest of us who will be forgotten. But even in academia (or perhaps especially in academia) there is a marked difference between being published, and being an accomplished writer, committed to improving the skills of communication.
Why do I write? I write because I know I have improved at it, and I sense my continuing improvement through the things I write. I know I enjoy it immensely, and I know that some of my attempts have enlightened and entertained others in the process. I write because I need to write. I write because I cannot imagine myself not writing.
The novelist, John Irving, said,
While little in the way of new light can be shed on an issue as well covered as this one, I will attempt to answer the question in a way that is meaningful for me, and I hope, for others as well. My reasons are my own, but I will also use the quotations of a few others. Some of my excuses for spending valuable time and energy on writing will ring particularly true . If my rationale sounds familiar, so be it. I will be pleased to be in the company of like-minded friends.
One could ask this question in other ways. We could turn it around and simply ask, "Why not write?" Why doesn’t everybody do it? Asked in this way, our answers may tell us a lot more than do the answers to the original question. These new answers tell us that, in fact, most everybody does write to some extent. And because of that fact, most people think that someone who claims to be a writer, is just fooling himself into believing he is something special. He is doing what everybody else does, but thinks his contributions are somehow more special, more significant, more indicative of some talent or specialized credentials. To the layman, it is easy and common to write. It is not special. It is indicative of no deeper insight, higher significance or particular talent.
This layman, whose opinion I am borrowing for this example, is one who knows he, too, writes. He may not write a lot, and he may write some pretty mundane things in his daily routine, but he does write. He is therefore a ‘writer,’ and he does not see much significance to the fact that some others spend so much time writing. Here writing is seen as only a matter of degree. This layman is a ‘writer’ who simply does not write as much as those who pretend to ‘be writers.’
Our layman usually has one other notable characteristic, which he also sees as relatively insignificant. While he ‘is a writer’ who simply does not write very much, he is usually also a ‘reader’ who does not read much. If he did read more, he might come to know some of the differences between what he ‘writes,’ and the writing of those more polished at the task. But I won’t trouble him any further here, as he has served his purpose for my example. Unfortunately, his attitude lives on in oblivious and sublime self-satisfaction, to frustrate and annoy writers everywhere. Bobby Knight, the basketball coach, is quoted as saying,
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