Why I write
I’ll admit I cribbed the title and idea of this piece. And not from Orwell, but from Didion, who copied it from Orwell in turn. There are many reasons I write, and I’ve discussed most of them briefly. This blog started out because I endeavoured to make my love of reading productive. That’s why it’s called Chris Reads, because I wrote book reviews, at the rate of one a month. I went on hiatus for a bit, then decided to write a thousand words a week as short form creative non-fiction. At the end of last year, I realized that it was silly to exclusively write non-fiction when I wanted to become a novelist, so I started throwing short stories into the mix, which brings us to where we are today. Why do I write?
Inertia is a big part of it, the belief that writing is productive, and it’s a habit I don’t want to break keeps me going. But why is it productive? My aspirations of becoming a novelist are a driving force, but why do I want to become a writer? Didion writes in her essay of the same name that she writes because she is a writer. She can’t help but to write, that her writing is half-creative process, half-itch. She sees the same things we see, but feels compelled to write a story about them. For Orwell, writing was also an inevitability: not only did he start writing from a young age, but he also claims that he hears a voice in his heard narrating everything from an omniscient third-person perspective. Though I profess no precocious talent or supernatural gift, writing is an increasing inevitability for me. I want to see my thoughts on paper, and I want to know what my thoughts will look like on paper. I jot down scraps of memories and flashes of insights that occur to me daily, hoping to meditate and write about all of them. But why?
Growing up, my mother always asked me why I thought the author wrote a book. I hated that question. She asked that of course, because she was trained in the school of literary criticism where all writing, a bourgeoise practice to be sure, had an agenda to push. Anything written without intent was poorly written and not worth reading. As I grew older, I came to realize that not all writing had an agenda, that sometimes the author just wanted to tell a story. They might not have meant anything by the story to start, or might not even have meant anything by the story by the time it was finished, but eventually it takes a life of its own, within the minds of its readers, and it can mean any variety of things for them.
Regardless of how the story is interpreted however, it can only be done so within the confines of the narrative as outlined by the author. In her essay, Didion claims that she imposes herself onto others through her writing, using “the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion”. Orwell on the other hand, lists four motives for writing he believes is present within every writer. One and two are “sheer egoism” and “aesthetic enthusiasm”. Both Didion’s and Orwell’s incentives seem to be a little less pure than I would have hoped for, but at least they’re honest. To an extent, I can surely agree with all three of those: I delight in the idea that my words will exist in someone’s mind, and perhaps even affect their thoughts. I revel in the possibility that my stories will outlive me and might exist in perpetuity. I enjoy stringing together sentences, the “infinite power of grammar” as Didion puts it, to meet my ends. Not only am I proud and egomaniacal, but I really do love writing.
As a much less practiced writer who stumbled upon this topic with much less meditation than either of my predecessors, I’ve realized that I have no reasons for writing a priori, and but the ones that they’ve provided resonated completely with me. A posteriori, I have noticed a few more advantages and conclusions. Writing essays are valuable for turning half-baked ideas into more developed thoughts, for finding inconsistencies within my logic: I might be able to swing a conversation through rhetoric, but it’s harder to read my sophistry in writing and decide that I want those words out there, and associated with me. Increasingly, I find that at parties, my talking points are all things that I’ve written about, which in turn have become topics I can proselytize about.
On a related note, I’ve also discovered that I don’t debate as much as I used to. Granted, I was an AnCap in college proactively spewing ideology at anyone who would listen, but I’ve stopped even among friends and within group chats. I think writing also scratches that pseudo-intellectual itch, and instead of pontificating to my friends, I now have a harmless little outlet to practice my war games. When conversation so much as takes one step over a topic I’ve thought immensely on however, I have a stockpile of talking points and witticisms.
In many of my essays, I wade through my thoughts on this and that until I arrive at a conclusion that sometimes I wasn’t even aware of at the outset. I would then have to go through the piece again, and amend it to make it seem as though I was driving a that the whole time. This essay is no different: it is only at this point now that I’ve found a good reason for writing, one that isn’t a review of its benefits, but as this piece is about writing in itself, I’ll leave things as they were. So, to answer the question laid out in the second paragraph: why do I want to practice writing and become a good writer? To be able to tell my story, and convince the world of my truth when the time arrives. In the meantime, I’ll whet my blade by waxing on about sentimentality, personal histories, and short fictional vignettes. But once when the time comes that there is something I truly want to persuade the world of, or a story that I think is important, I will be ready. And that is why I write.
