While I was wandering around the internet looking for an inspirational quote, or perhaps marketing strategy to sell more books, I came across the following quote about writing by Ruthanne Reid:
“We write because we've felt things, struggled through things, and want to help others find their way along those rocky paths. We write because we've learned something that could help others through the unexpectedness of life. We write because we see things in a way many others don't, and we know would benefit them.”
“Do you know why you write? This may be one of the most important questions you ever answer in the course of your writing career. Why? Because there will be days when no one around you, including yourself, believes you can really do this.”
Hard Cold Facts About Writing
Some days, you won’t feel like a writer. Your ideas will look terrible to you. Your own style will feel pedantic or weird or immature. A nagging voice in your head will whisper you’re wasting your time. On those days, when your writing seems like something no one would ever want to read, it is essential to have an answer to the question of why you write.
Not everyone around you will be supportive of your writing. Doubt-bombs can drop from well-meaning parents, from helpful siblings, from friends who don’t understand how much writing means to you. They can fall from the fingers of other writers or from complete strangers. Doubt-bombs can come from absolutely anywhere, and when they hit, they fragment. They leave shrapnel, cutting into everything and making your insides bleed. In those hours, when someone who knows your heart unwittingly stabs it by questioning your identity as a writer, you need to be able to answer this question.
6 Reasons For Writing:
This is by no means an exhaustive list. Its purpose is to get you thinking, dialoguing with your own brain. Don’t be afraid to add your own answers.
1. We write for others.
Life is a crazy road; it’s filled with potholes, twists and turns, and sometimes really poorly maintained stretches that could blow your tires. We write because we’ve felt things, struggled through things, and want to help others find their way along those rocky paths.
We write because we’ve learned something that could help others through the unexpectedness of life.
We write because we see things in a way many others don’t, and we know would benefit them.
2. We write for ourselves.
The act of creating is every bit as good for you as working out, eating right, and getting enough sleep.
Writing builds your sense of worth.
Writing relieves stress.
Writing enables you to push off the terrible lie that you don’t matter, or that everything you do is temporary.
Writing helps you to see the parts of life that are beautiful and interesting.
Writing helps you to mine your past, pulling jewels from darkness, and strength and beauty from trial.
3. We write for the sake of the story.
We write because we’ve been deeply moved by something we read (fantasy or nonfiction, it doesn’t matter), and we yearn to be able to replicate that feeling in what we write.
I don’t know about you, but my life was deeply affected by the stories I read when I was young. I was overweight, unpopular, and generally weird. I had no friends—but reading stories gave me the courage to push through. Reading stories took me out of my own unhappy world and into a brilliant one where, though things were dark, joy and hope were possible as long as I (and the protagonists) never gave up.
I write because I want to give that experience to others. I want to share the wordy medicine that helped me.
4. We write for the sake of beauty.
Art is beautiful. Words can be beautiful, even when they describe ugliness and abuse, or sorrow and the passing of precious things.
Writing gives voice to the fire in the human soul, the one that burns brightly enough to turn even simple daylight into longing, beauty, and heartache.
5. We write for the sake of grief.
Sorrow and pain need an outlet.
Writing gives us a chance to work through things, to give voice to sorrow, which also gives us a chance to heal.
Writing lets us frame the strangeness of dark feelings into something definable, if not precisely manageable.
6. We write for fun.
This is a big one, and for some of you, it’s going to make no sense. You’re allowed to write for fun.
For the half of you that already know this, you can read on. But for the rest (myself included), hear me again:
You’re allowed to write for fun.
You don’t have to do it to make money. You don’t have to do it for some higher purpose. You don’t have to be in it to save the world.
You are allowed to write for fun, to write because you enjoy it, to write because writers make a fantastic community to belong to. You don’t even owe an answer to people who question your right to be a writer. If you write for fun, then you have a good and real reason to write.
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