The Best Advice From Writers On Why They Write
"I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn." - Anne Frank
Do a quick Google of ‘how to start writing’ and you’ll be greeted with a never-ending rabbit hole of resources, advice, guidance, writing prompts, and interviews with writers discussing their own writing process.
The vastness of stuff out there to help us get to grips with our own ideas of writing, whether it be for personal pleasure or because we want to develop a professional career, highlights the insatiable appetite that exists for those of us who see writing as not just something to do, but something we must do.
Alongside all this guidance though, I can’t help but notice there’s a lot of something else.
Complaining.
Many writers will happily tell you the ailments that pursuing a career in writing has inflicted on them. The emotional and mental toll of getting words down onto paper is well documented, and nearly everyone I meet at writing workshops seems to have similar sentiments they’re happy to entertain the class with: writing is such a pain in the a@#!
Which begs the ultimate question - Why do it at all? Why spend so much time feeling miserable about doing something that seems to only share its valued delights every so often?
Thankfully, for almost (almost) every complaint I’ve read or heard, there is a sentiment advocating for the wondrous sense of joy and fulfilment writing can create. Below I’ve compiled a list of my favourite quotes from renown writers, answering the very question that should lie at the heart of every writing practice: Why I Write.
“Writing is my way of expressing – and thereby eliminating – all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.” – Zadie Smith
“I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can’t be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.” – Sylvia Plath
“Why does one begin to write? Because she feels misunderstood, I guess. Because it never comes out clearly enough when she tries to speak. Because she wants to rephrase the world, to take it in and give it back again differently, so that everything is used and nothing is lost. Because it’s something to do to pass the time until she is old enough to experience the things she writes about.” – Nicole Krauss
“Because I can’t seem to escape it. It’s a way for me to address and counter my questions about what it means to be human, or, in my case a Dominican human who grew up in New Jersey.” – Junot Diaz
“Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself…It’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.” – Harper Lee
“Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.” – Anaïs Nin
“In the big picture, I write for an audience of people I’ve never met. By the final draft, I’m looking for anything in the prose that’s prospectively boring to strangers.” – Lionel Shriver
“I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.” – Octavia E. Butler
“That is why I write – to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance.” – Paulo Coelho
"I write to discover what I know." - Flannery O'Connor
"I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living." - Anne Morrow Lindbergh
"You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you, and we edit to let the fire show through the smoke." - Arthur Plotnik
For me, the quotes from Zadie Smith, Octavia E. Butler, Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Arthur Plotnik always ring the loudest in my ears.
Writing is a way of formulating not only our lived experiences but all the spaces in-between them. When I write, it’s not always about getting published or finding a home for my words. Often, it’s about tuning into a small bell that’s been ringing in my head, reminding me of something long forgotten that needs to recalled and excavated.
Writing is a process of revisiting the past versions of myself and healing the parts that have been forgotten in daily living of life. It’s a way of falling in love, with both myself and those I care about, all over again.
