Why I Write

Oh God. I must be at the bottom of the blogging barrel, because dude… doesn’t everybody do one of these?  I mean, somewhere out there, isn’t there a quote from every novelist who ever gnawed on a pen talking about why they write?


Ugh.


Because I’m telling you, I’ve got nothing profound, or if I do it’s going to sound pompous as all hell.


So, lessee, lessee… why I write, why I write… 


I don’t think I’m going to count the number, because we all know how that ends.

Why I Write–


*  Because it helps me get rid of the voices in my head.


*  Because it seems to justify my internet shopping addiction.


*  Because I thought amazon.com was a celebrity site and I’m too blind to be paparazzi, so this was my way of being a part of the club!


*  Because in the 80’s, none of the romance writers would say “cock” on the page, and I had a burning desire to fix that.


*  Because the love triangle thing always seemed so short sighted– why can’t she have BOTH, goddammit, WHY?


*  Because the real life diet consists of me not eating, and on the page the literary diet consists of one character telling the other to eat.


*  Because a friend of mine told me that I would leave my mark in little ends of yarn from knitting, and I realized that the only think we really remembered about Shakespeare’s clothes was that he didn’t like French hose because it cut off circulation to his balls.


*  Because unlike anything else in my life ten years ago, when I put something on the page and showed it to the world, at least somebody in the world said, “Good job!”


*  Because I’d spent my entire life learning literature and teaching literature, and goddammit, I wanted to do some literature!


*  Because my colleagues at the time mocked romantic literature and crazy artists, and I couldn’t understand why they didn’t see that the literature we taught and the writers we studied were often just the same as the romantic literature I read and the crazy artists they mocked. 


*  Because I’d been losing myself in my imagination for most of my life, but saying I was “writing” just made it sound cooler.


*  Because I’ve always been an opinionated little shit, and writing gave me a way to voice my opinion without giving in to my irrational rage.


*  Because the people who read what wanted to write were just as crazy as I am, and when everybody is the same sort of crazy that’s a community, and that’s where I wanted to live.


*  Because when I’m at a party, boring stories about my family are a reason for me to drink and other people to shun me, but when I’m blogging, they’re considered “networking” and “work”.


*  Because I had the cat and the computer and writing was the only place to go after that.


*  Because I had stories to tell, and for no other reason.  I had stories to tell, and the first story wasn’t enough and the second story wasn’t enough and the third and fourth and fiftieth haven’t been enough.  I write for the same reason I talked to my stuffed animals and saved up anecdotes to tell my husband and got the degree with the thirty extra units in English and was so zealous about the subject that I had to teach it to spread the word.  


I write because I have stories.

See?  Silly and pompous.  Was I right or was I right?