Bloganuary Day 6: Write

Another day of January, another day of the WordPress Bloganuary challenge. Today’s prompt asks:

Why do you write?

I always saw myself as a writer.

I wrote stories. I made up characters. I studied writing craft. I wrote more.

It took a long time for me to feel like a real writer, but I kept writing. For all the years I’ve been doing this, I don’t recall ever having a strong why. It’s never been for a romanticized reason, like “because I must write to survive,” although I suppose that is true. I write frequently because I feel like I need to write. Sometimes I don’t even know what I’ll write about until I begin.

That’s the thing. Even when I wasn’t writing fiction, I was journaling. I was blogging. I was trying my hand at writing creative nonfiction essays.

But what is my why?

Maybe it’s simple: To prove to myself I can. Because my head is full of stories and I need to put them somewhere… and goodness knows I can’t draw, so writing makes sense.

Maybe it’s more complex: Because being a good writer means something to me at my core. Because it gives me something to strive for. Because once I publish something, once I write something even, nobody can take that away from me. Nobody can say I didn’t. Once I write, and especially once I publish, that writing will exist forever, and with my name on it.

When I read this question, my first thought was: oh my, that’s a loaded question. Maybe it is. But it’s still one worth exploring.