Not only the question we ask ourselves, but more-so, the question that others ask us. Why do we do it; why do we write? Why do we write what we do?
It is easily the most complicated answer to give someone. It's not that we don't know, it's just difficult for those who don't have a passion filled desire to do something to understand. Imagine being asked the question, "Why do you breathe?". I suppose the answer seems obvious...or does it?
Some may give you the response,"...to live...," or maybe, "...because we have to..." Whatever the reason, our answer as writers are much the same...because we have to, to live. Simple enough answer with an incomprehensible number of per-mutated reasons. From money, to the need simply spreading a message, the origin makes no difference. It is simply that a writer has to write.
Check out Mario Vargas Llosa's "letters to a young novelist"...good insight to why writers writer at all.
ReplyDelete“Why would anyone who is deeply satisfied with reality, with real life as it is lived, dedicate himself to something as insubstantial and fanciful as the creation of fictional realities? Naturally, those who rebel against lie as it is, using their ability to invent different lives and different people, may do so for any number of reasons, honorable or dishonorable, generous or selfish, complex or banal. The nature of this basic questioning of reality, which to my mind lies at the heart of every literary calling, doesn't matter at all. What matters is that the rejection be strong enough to fuel the enthusiasm for a task as quixotic as tilting at windmills – the slight-of-hand replacement of the concrete, objective world of life as it is lived with the subtle and ephemeral world of fiction.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, Letters to a Young Novelist