On Writing No. 1: The Inevitable Question

Soon comes the day when some well-meaning person asks the inevitable question of any writer: Why?

It’s happened to me quite a few times, in fact. All anyone wants to know is the answer to this question, as if knowing it will explain the intricacies of writing. What they do not know is that often, the writer is unsure about the Why as well. 

Sure, we know the lowercase why behind our writing. We write because we are writers. It’s a simple response that encapsulates the projects, the struggles, the deleted words, the breakthroughs, the drafts, the multitude of documents saved in various locations with names like Novel1.5.4FORREAL, and so much more. 

But Why do we write what we write and Why does that question send a bolt of panic through us (or is that just me)? 

Personally, I like asking this question of myself. I enjoy applying the nuance of context to it. Instead of a blanketing ‘Why?’, I look at each individual application of this inevitable question to my writing once I have answered the initial question to my own satisfaction. 

So, I sit down, or I go outside and follow my three-year-old around on his various adventures, and I deliberately question my process and whatever I am currently writing. Why did I choose this point of view for the narrative or the poem? Why did I begin at this point? Why is it in the past tense? Why, why, why, why, why, why, until I finally exhaust that line of inquiry and at last travel into the others: the ‘woulds,’ the ‘hows,’ the ‘whens,’ the ‘whos,’ and, at last, the ‘what ifs.’ 

It is only upon reaching ‘what if’ that I get to the heart of writing. Answering a what-if question requires thinking on several fronts—past, present, and future. It also brings me back full circle to other questions, so questions beget questions, and all of those threads add up to something wonderful: words. Those words build worlds, ideas, memories, and so much more. 

Questions—even those we dread—are worth heaps of dragon gold. Using them to revise or expand a work in progress is an act of careful creation. 

                                                                                                    

Why do I write?

A confession: I did not always like to write, and I dreaded anyone—even myself—questioning the things I did write. The Inevitable Question would invariably send me into a spiral of self-doubt while stoking my feelings of inadequacy. 

It is here that I feel school failed me. I found solace in reading other’s words. I devoured books and always carried one with me. 

However, if a teacher assigned me to write about one of those books? No thanks. I was quite comfortable digesting it internally without putting my thoughts into visible words for someone else to read and grade. Despite my hyperlexic ability to read, comprehend, and remember vast quantities of written information from a very young age, which translated to doing exceptionally well on tests of my knowledge, I was not a strong writer. I struggled to make A’s in my English courses in high school. 

As a G&T student, I was in the upper-level courses—the pre-APs and the APs—and making less than A’s in those would have tanked my GPA. The feedback I consistently received from my teachers was that I was a mediocre writer, lacking source integration and too reliant on personal reflection. I’d make up for these grades by taking tests where I could flex my knowledge retention and recall. 

I sure showed them on the ACT. Well, except for the math portion, where the 25 brought my overall score down to a  32. 

But those reviews of my writing haunted me still. I decided never to write again and to pursue a visual arts degree after high school. No writing there, I thought. Or math. 

It was not until college—and a rather strange freshman Honors English composition course—that I discovered writing was not as scary or restrictive as I assumed. And that those high school teachers were very limited, not only in their feedback but also in their mindsets. 

An alternative hippie taught the class. She wore platform combat boots and fishnet stockings. Her round sunglasses perched on a face devoid of makeup except for thick black eyeliner. Her smoky voice would begin each class with questions: Soooooo, who wants to start the class with an observation about the reading? Why did Barthes/Sarte/Barthelme/whoever we were reading that day write about what they wrote about? What does any of this have to do with us right now? 

She introduced us to Morning Pages and Artist Dates from The Artist’s Way (by Julia Cameron). We did not write traditional research papers like they taught us to write in high school. We wrote personal reflections on the readings. We were investigators. We interrogated the works she had us read and then interrogated ourselves. 

In sum, we learned to ask questions. Suddenly, I grew hungry to write. Here was this incredibly odd woman, sharing ideas with me and encouraging me to write, and I did not feel as if my words were any less worthy than those on the assignment list. 

Why do I write? I write because this one college instructor made me write every day and did not discourage me. She helped me find the writer within me when I was certain that version of me did not exist. 

I write to question the world. I write to investigate life. I write because sometimes I wonder why I still write. 

I always end up here. 

And why not? 

Until next time…