Why Do I Write
Why do you write? Why do we write?
I’ve been resisting writing lately. I write two words and stare blankly at the screen for 10 minutes.
But, I still can feel that urge in me to write.
In the middle of these two opposite urges this question came up to me:
Why do I write?
An intriguing one, I thought. So I decided to write about it. And surprisingly finding words didn’t seem like hard work anymore.
For a long time, I kept myself from writing. I thought the world had enough writers and who would read my work anyway.
But I couldn’t help it. It just flowed naturally on papers, on my phone’s notes, on docs.
At some point, I started sharing my writings with my sister and some of my friends and I felt proud when they liked it as if it was my baby.
Then when I fell in love and had my heart broken eventually, I started writing more. And I hated myself for doing that. I felt like I was writing for someone that will never read me.
But then I realized that I wasn’t writing for him. I was writing for myself. I was writing to make sense of my feelings and thoughts. I was writing to make sense of life.
Writing has always been a form of self-expression for me, a way in which I can free the wildest feelings I had throughout my life. The ones that haunted me and kept me awake at night.
I had imaginary conversations with these feelings, I created characters that went through similar things with different narratives.
That’s my superpower, the superpower of creating, of giving life to a story, to a character, to a whole imaginary world that I can shape as I wish. To a world that I live inside and that lives inside me. I can feel each and every event happening in there. I can see it. I can live it.
If I had to answer the question “why do I write?” with one sentence it would be:
Because when I write, I feel powerful as if I’m a witch and my magic wand is words.
And now I even have more reasons.
Writing is the way I meet you. It’s the way you get to know me and feel me. It’s the way you see yourself in my stories as I see myself in other writers’ stories. It’s the way I share my voice and the voices of others that are going through similar experiences.
And above all writing is the way we share life and wisdom and empathize with one another. It’s the way we remember our oneness. Because we’re hungry for stories, for human connection, for feeling that we’re not alone in what we’re going through.
And I admire every one of you dear writers sharing your stories and thoughts.
Now you know my story and reasons. What about you? What is your story? Why do you write?
