Why Do You Write?

It's a question we've all asked ourselves at one time or another.

Do you write for fame, fortune and glory? Do you want to make a career of it? Do you write as an escape or release? Or simply for the sheer fun, enjoyment and accomplishment that comes from the act of creation?

I'm curious to know where your motivations lie.

For myself, I do it for the sheer fun of it. Financial gain is just a pleasantly unexpected by-product of something I'd be doing even if I never made a bean from the process.

I would like to go into it professionally but in the meantime it is just for fun. Even if I do go professional, I'd like to keep it fun however

Johnstone McGuckian wrote:I would like to go into it professionally but in the meantime it is just for fun. Even if I do go professional, I'd like to keep it fun however

And that's the way you should strive to keep it, Johnstone. Once it stops being fun it becomes just another job. And we all know that's the very last way you should look on your writing.

I don't see it as fun. It's a need slash desire. If I stop I must have something else to sustain me, like chocolate or wine, or both.

Arranging words on a page and creating something that didn't exist yesterday, but will exist tomorrow and for eternity (at least until we all get nuked) is the most exhilarating thing I have ever done. And I've only been doing it for 6 years. I feel like kicking the cat when I ponder over the years I lost. And if i die tomorrow, thus not being able to write any more, I'm going to be really pissed off.

writingmum wrote:I don't see it as fun. It's a need slash desire. If I stop I must have something else to sustain me, like chocolate or wine, or both.

Arranging words on a page and creating something that didn't exist yesterday, but will exist tomorrow and for eternity (at least until we all get nuked) is the most exhilarating thing I have ever done. And I've only been doing it for 6 years. I feel like kicking the cat when I ponder over the years I lost. And if i die tomorrow, thus not being able to write any more, I'm going to be really pissed off.

Ah, you're the driven variety - tis good. Such people create some of the very finest material. I actually do know exactly what you mean - I've had the desire to write since I was just a boy. Hell, I've actually been writing creatively for that long.

It's just that the sense of fun part of the drive has never really gone away. Indeed, if anything - I have more fun doing it now than I did back then.

Yeah, I guess it is fun too. Do you laugh to yourself when you're typing something funny? I do. It's embarrassing when I'm in public.

And when its pacy, I get all hot under the collar and have to take my cardi off.

writingmum wrote:Yeah, I guess it is fun too. Do you laugh to yourself when you're typing something funny? I do. It's embarrassing when I'm in public.

And when its pacy, I get all hot under the collar and have to take my cardi off.

I do laugh to myself when I write something funny, actually. Which is often - since there's a strong vain of dark humour that runs even through my most serious subjects.

As for taking my cardi off for pacier stuff - certainly not. I am British, don't'cha know.

I write because I love the English language, because I really enjoy making people laugh and also because it's great to be able to espouse your views on things - all the better when these are couched underneath multiple layers.

The Co=Ordinator wrote:I write because I love the English language, because I really enjoy making people laugh and also because it's great to be able to espouse your views on things - all the better when these are couched underneath multiple layers.

Quiet possibly the very best reasons of all for taking up the pen.

And since you do all of those things so very, very well - we're all the better for having you and your considerable talent around.

The Co=Ordinator wrote:I write because I love the English language, because I really enjoy making people laugh and also because it's great to be able to espouse your views on things - all the better when these are couched underneath multiple layers.

Nicely said.

Is this the only profession where one spends huge amounts of time and effort, with huge rewards that are not monetary?

And i also think we're lucky that it is something we can do by sitting down all day.

I see my imagination as a vast universe, where weird and wonderful ideas are hidden from the outside world. Writing for me is a way of expressing all the wonders of my imagination to family and friends. When it comes down to it, I just want to tell an epic story!

Because I like observing people - how they talk and move and looking at those weird little things we all do and say - and then replicating that as best as I can. Also because the notion that I could rearrange the beauty of the English language to make people happy, angry, sad, or even to make people think is to me a genuinely amazing craft, and one I admire hugely.

Because it feels right. I love to let my imagination run riot. Crafting people, their stories and even their little worlds. Sometimes I write because it's therapeutic, especially when I'm down or stressed.

I do genuinely love to write. Even way back in infants 20+ years ago when we had to write a 'diary' on Monday mornings, most would tut but a few (including myself) would enjoy it. In secondary school, my favourite Subject was English, sadly not much creative writing there, but I really got into studying the books, analysing them, writing the essays about them (Moreso modern-ish fiction than Shakespeare).

Moving onto College, I did media production, and that's where I discovered the joy of screenwriting aged 17. Even got the best grade (the only one to be graded 'Distinction', oh yeahhh!) in my class for a 15 page script, and I haven't looked back.

There's not been a sniff of a commission 10 years on, but it's still something I've loved doing on and off, but quite frequently these last couple of years. Even if I never get commissioned or published, I'll still carry on. I love writing. It just feels right that I do a lot of it in my spare time.

I can't see myself not writing.

I write for several reasons, each of them sadder than the last.

Firstly, I'm a big fan of psychology and philosophy. My overall aim in life is to just understand how people and the universe works and, though this feat is quite possibly futile, it certainly gives me enough to chew over and think about while eating a bowl of cereal or finding myself bored with nothing better to do. Writing allows me to take these ideas and fully explore them by turning them into characters, settings, plots and themes which I can then manipulate to my own will, look at from all angles and generally feel like I'm doing something constructive with my ideas instead of just letting them fester in my own head.
Of course, this ends up with a lot of Mary Sues, repeated themes and images, and scripts that my close friends will never get to read. My only hope is that stuff like "taking an old school crush I once had and turning it into a surreal examination of the changing face of relationships in a computer age where you don't even need to ever meet a person in order to gain a close relationship with them" is writing on a slightly higher level than "I'll put myself on the Star Trek Enterprise and have Spock constantly tell me how great I am, and the girl I have a crush on will be there and will be jealous and fall in love with me".

Secondly, I just really enjoy it. When you've finished a script, just the pride that comes out of knowing that you've actually made something is brilliant. The feeling you get when you've invented a character that you yourself want to know more about is brilliant. I'm a very big ideas man, and getting those ideas down on paper and properly realised is just so satisfying to me.

Of course, I want to take my writing onto an eventual career, but that's because this is the type of thing that I want to spend the rest of my life doing. If I get a kick out of just producing something, imagine if other people like it, and then imagine if it gets made, and then imagine it gets positive reviews, a good number of viewers and a fanbase? You've created characters and worlds and shared them with people, and they like them as much as you do. That's what I want to do with my life.

Wow! Kudos to you, Tevs.

If you write as well as you post, I would read your work. :-)

I write because it's the thing that makes me happy, it's the thing that I'm best at and it turns out that people will sometimes pay me to do it.

If I can turn that into 'people will pay me to do that instead of anything else', I'll have a career.

If not, I've got a hobby. Both a perfectly acceptable.