Inspired by the question posed by the National Day on Writing
I write because I don’t know what I think until I’ve put it
into words, and sometimes there’s no one around to say it to.
I write for the same reason that I need long walks and home
cooked meals—my body needs it, so does my soul.
I write because it gets me out of my brain and into my body.
I write because I overhear conversations on the street or
listen to anecdotes my friends tell me and my first response is “Wouldn’t that
make a good story?”
I write because I can’t take photographs.
I write because I can’t tell lies.
I write because I am really bad at thinking on the fly. In writing
I have time to come up with the perfect rebuttal, hours after the argument is
over (the argument in which I said nothing, just stood and opened and closed my
mouth like a fish).
I write because metaphors are miraculous. In that last
sentence I added a fish even though, as far as we know, fish can’t argue.
I write because I love em dashes and colons and rolling
repetitive rhythms. Oh, and alliteration.
I write because I think better with a pen in my hand.
I write to retell the good old stories. You know the ones I’m
talking about— coming of age tales, heroic quests, love stories, testimonies of
faith, death and rebirth. They may have been told thousands of times already
across human history, but they are so big—so true—that they don’t fit into one
retelling, or even a hundred retellings. There is still room for me in these
old stories.
I write because telling stories, naming the world, is what
makes us human.
I write because despite our best efforts, this is still a
sexist, racist, unequal and indifferent world. And maybe if I can tell a story
about one moment, real or imagined, where people manage to break free of that
for a moment and live in compassion—maybe that changes things.
I write because placing myself in a character’s shoes
reminds me that everyone in my life has a backstory I may not know.
I write to discover things I don’t know until I see them on
the page.
I write to remember.
* * *
Why I am a Writer, or why I call myself a Writer, is a
different question than why I write. I used to write because I liked to read.
Nerdy dreamy girls in books—Emily of New Moon, Vicky Austin, Harriet the Spy—ended
up writers. And so did the women and men whose pictures I saw on the back
jacket flap. I used to write because I loved stories and I hadn’t yet learned
to fear what people thought of them.
Why do I still call myself a writer? I’m not sure. Today I’m
more of an editor and occasional blogger. But I still introduce myself with
that loaded word.
At a craft talk once a writer said—I can’t remember who—that
real writers love sentences. I thought when I heard that, I do love sentences—the
millions of ways they can look and sound. So maybe I am a real writer.
I also love to revise—to carefully dissect each sentence and
stitch it back together to see if each phrase and word and consonant is saying
what I wanted it to say. Many people say this is one of the worst parts of the
writing process. So maybe if I love the hard things, I am a real writer.
I am a writer because I named myself a writer, almost six
years ago, and I’ve been trying to live into that call ever since.
I write because I am a writer, and I don’t know what that
means, but this is the only way I know to find out.
