Why do you write?

[hopeless87]

Just ran across a thread here that made me wonder, why do people become writers? What is your motivation for taking up this hobby of word-smithing? How many people out there are hoping to be the next R.L. Stine and how many just do it for kicks? Here's the post I was going to place in that thread, before I made this one.

I haven't published anything yet but I have been writing my whole life. I hear talking about their motivations for writing and I think that's very intesting! If I may add my 2 cents, I write because it comes to me naturally. I've never thought about writing, it's just been the way that the pen hit the paper. In all honesty I'm not even sure why what I do is considered writing because anything I write is just my attempt to find the right words to display what I'm thinking or feeling.

It comes out poetic, but it's actually just my inner monologue without my attempts to cencor it coming out of my mouth. I'm not sure if anyone else feels that way but I think that writing should be like that in some fashion. It has to be natural and flow in order to be true to the writer.

Not sure where I'm going with this really. I guess I mean, if you're gonig to write then just let it happen. Any attempts to play to a market will probably be not as fulfilling. Not saying you won't get published and won't get money, but personally if I'm going to do something which requires a trade in energy then it wouldn't be writing. Writing is where I feel free! I wouldn't tarnish that with deadlines.

[4urentertainment]

Interesting thread!

Personally, my answer for this has always been, because I love to create stories and worlds, because I always "start a story, not knowing how it will end, so I can't wait to finish it because I want to see what happens at the end", (and obviously if I would ever have to do this as a job I'd have to actually plan things and stop winging it) but you can create stories and worlds in a variety of other arts, why writing specifically?

And as I got older I realized it's not particularly the stories that attracted me to writing so much, it's the art of putting emotions into words. Writing, or language, is a medium of communication, and words are the tools for that, graceful tools that few manage to use effectively.

So aspiring to be a writer means embarking on a quest to master these tools, to be able to eloquently put your thoughts into words. To communicate what others cannot.

At 5/28/13 05:30 PM, hopeless87 wrote: It comes out poetic, but it's actually just my inner monologue without my attempts to cencor it coming out of my mouth. I'm not sure if anyone else feels that way but I think that writing should be like that in some fashion. It has to be natural and flow in order to be true to the writer.

And continuing that thought, I can relate to that. I feel that it's either that writers just happen to have interesting thoughts going on in their head, that other people basically pay to listen to when they pay to read your work, or that everyone has interesting thoughts, but writers are the only ones who can put them down efficaciously.