Why Do You Write?

I was given this as a prompt for one of my classes, and let me tell you…this was not easy to answer. I sat down with my Microsoft Word document opened and I watched as the curser continued to blink, yet I could not put my fingers to the keys. My mind was blank.

Have you ever sat down for a test, completely confident that you were going to ace it, and once it’s in front of you, completely blank? Well, that’s how I felt when I began to write this.

You see, I write for so many reasons. When I first began writing, I was nine years old. My books offered me an escape from reality, and I wanted to put myself into this new, unknown universe. The thought of creating my own reality, building a world where I wasn’t myself, but someone else, was exciting. The more I did that, the easier life seemed for me. I was never one to journal, afraid that my sister or my parents would find my diary and read all my thoughts. So, I made characters that reflected my feelings, my questions about life, my confusions about growing up. With each year that passed me by, my characters grew with me. Their situations changed, their problems morphed, and their revelations became my own. The more I wrote, and reread my work, the more I was able to try and understand my own feelings, reflect on my mistakes, and grow into myself. An interesting thing about my novels from childhood is that none of them had endings. I was never able to complete a book before writing a new one. I like to think that it was because I wasn’t ready for an end—that I wanted to keep my journey going and my characters to continue learning and growing.

When I write now, I do it because I love it. I no longer write for an escape. I just write for myself and for a purpose. I write books or stories that I would enjoy reading if it were someone else behind the keyboard, books I haven’t seen before. I write about things that interest me, things that I feel made an impact in my life and, in hopes, will impact others. Writing to me has been a life saver. When I am writing, I tend to opt for a happier ending, even if it may seem a little cheesy or cliché at times. I want my work to reflect real world problems. I want it to push the boundary, make some noise, cause debate, make people feel a little uncomfortable at times because that is what life is—a mix of all those things. And with those things come little girls and boys, or even adults, who feel alone, confused, scared, underrepresented. I want that audience to feel like they are being seen or comforted. I want to bring entertainment, but also a message. As I get older, I gain more perspective with every situation I encounter and it reflects in my writing.

So, for short, I write because there are power in words and one day my words can maybe be a beacon of hope for a kid, like some of my books were for me.

Now tell me, why do you write (or read)?