Writing (Photo credit: jjpacres)
Everyone has their own reasons for doing things. You have your reasons for writing, and I have mine, and they aren’t all going to be the same reasons. We all have our own motives, and we each need to understand our own.
For myself, one reason I write is because these ideas are bouncing around in my head, and sometimes they simply make too much racket for me to be able to sleep. I’ve tried ignoring them, but they keep coming back to me, often in the middle of the night when I should be asleep. I’ve tried drowning them out by immersing myself in other people’s stories, like watching seven seasons of ‘Bones‘ on NetFlix, or reading all five volumes in George R. R. Martin‘s ‘Song of Ice and Fire‘ series in a two-week time, but my own ideas keep resurfacing, stirred up by the very ideas I’m using to try to cover them. I need to get my ideas out of my head, one way or another. The easiest way for me to get them out of my head is to talk about them, share them with my friends, only the ideas keep coming back later, when new friends present themselves, all unwitting, and ask me what I’m thinking about. However, people being who and what they are, getting someone to sit down and listen to me while I repeatedly ramble on and on about the ideas in my head without paying them to listen is really difficult. It is far simpler (and cheaper) for me to write down those ideas and try to make stories out of them, so people can read them later, than it is to try to corral an audience to sit still and listen to me, and not interrupt, and pay attention, and otherwise be good listeners. That is one of the main reasons why I write. There are others — the desire for money and fame among them, yes — but the main reason I write is to get those ideas out of my head so I can rest more easily.
Why do you write? I’d love to know! Please share your reasons in the comments below.
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