No, Really, Why Do You Write?
By Heather Webb | March 28, 2019 |
https://wallpapercave.com/dark-sea-wallpaper
A friend of mine recently asked me why I write. She found she couldn’t answer the question herself, not anymore. She’d lost the love, and she was hoping something I’d say, as well as the other writers around her, would trigger an awakening in her. She wanted to find her path back to the career about which she had once been so passionate. I think we all go through this at one time or other, when life at home becomes difficult, or when everything in your writing career goes wrong. The rejections become unbearable, you lose an agent, your editor leaves and you’re left orphaned. Your sales aren’t what you hoped and there’s question as to whether or not your next book will be picked up at all. Then there’s the dreaded: “Sorry, you’ll have to take a pen name because Jane Doe is dead.”
I’ve recently suffered a painful rejection from someone I didn’t expect. A reminder that no matter how many books you have in print, no matter where you think you are in your career, your books, your ideas, your style are subjective and you can be rejected as easily as someone who has never sold a book before. I don’t think “established” authors talk about this enough. How often we still suffer various forms of rejection. Each book is like an audition, and your work may or may not be selected for the competitive publishing schedule. (This is why it must be about the writing, but I digress.) In any event, one never really grows accustomed to rejection, not really, and when it happens, I think many of us find ourselves asking the same question:
Why do I write? Do I write for the money (*guffaw*), or fame (*Still laughing. My stomach hurts*), or do I write just because I love stories? Perhaps it’s because of some other buried reason.
In any case, I knew I had to give my friend a real answer—not a cheerleading, manufactured thing that glosses over the pain.
The pain is almost always where the answers lie.
That’s where I began. My own, deeply buried emotional motivation for writing.
It all went back to the books. Why had I always loved books so much? They were such an integral part of my history.
I went back in time, deep into my memories, to my pre-school self at age five. This was the year my birth mother left my dad, sister, and me. She sent a few packages and postcards in the mail, made an occasional phone call, but that was it. She was gone. For some reason, she hadn’t found time with her girls very important. I bet you can guess what age I learned to read? By the time I was six, I could read at a fourth grade level. And then we moved. You see, my dad was in the military, so we moved every couple of years. Psychologists say that the emotional fallout from a move is akin to a death for a child. I moved seven times before I graduated high school. All of that loss as a five year old compounded by more loss; loss of a mother, of friends, of the stability of home and school and environment.
It was a hard way to grow up, but also in many, many ways a blessed one. (With a happy ending, but that’s a story for another day.) My story is harder than some, easier than others, but what matters is the books.
What happened during those years, with all of those books? I visited foreign lands. I learned about love and empathy—and murder. I found friends.
I found the perfect mother.
My answer to my friend’s question was this: I write because books are my home. They are my stability, they are the roof over my head. I relish their lessons. I take comfort in their music. I write because it helps me make sense of the world. And we’re good at that as writers, aren’t we? Excavating the layers of defenses in our characters to get to the heart of things. But it’s so much harder with ourselves. In fact, I had no idea how emotional my answer would make me.
I write because books have always been my home. My shelter from the storm. I write because it gives me joy. It gives me pain, too, but OH, THE JOY. It’s intoxicating and can make me euphoric.
The publishing industry is very difficult. (That’s an understatement, right?) It’s easy to lose sight of why we’re here, putting ourselves through the grueling process of becoming published—and staying published, and weathering the various forms of humility flung our way. We think things like, “If I can just get an agent…if I can just get a book deal…if I can just sell another book, or sell this many copies…” Our measures of success shift constantly. We compare ourselves to others. And the worst thing of all—we question our self-worth over and over again.
But I say stop comparing your journey to someone else’s. Stop becoming consumed by everything you don’t have. Stop placing your value on whether or not someone else likes what you have to say. It is your art—your words—not theirs. Remember that your stories illuminate the lightest and darkest corners of human nature and give the smallest facets of life meaning. They bring beauty to the world.
That’s the thing. We can drown in our disillusionment and disappointments, sink to the bottom of a dark sea, or we can hold our breath and paddle like hell to shore. We can look the fear and rejection and hopelessness in the eye and laugh, because those emotions don’t hold the power. The power is in the words—it’s in the passion—and that’s what every single writer in the Writer Unboxed community has, or you wouldn’t be here, reading this. Absorbing a bit of advice and inspiration so you can weather the next storm with all the strength you’ve built inside of you.
So when it’s very dark and there have been more rejections and let-downs than you think you can bear, do this: Go back to that moment in time when you knew you must write. What did it look like? How did it feel? Why did it fill you up? How can you nurture yourself—your creative being—to get back there? Find that love again. It never left you. It has been lying in wait.
I leave you with a quote by an early twentieth century English author named Enid Bagnold:
“Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. … It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.”
When did you know you had to write? What did you love about it then? Has that love changed?
Heather Webb is the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of historical fiction. As a freelance editor and an adjunct in a MFA in Creative Writing program, Heather has helped many writers sign with agents and go on to sell at market. When not writing, she feeds her cookbook addiction, geeks out on history and pop culture, and looks for excuses to head to the other side of the world. To date, her books have been translated to seventeen languages.
Heather, my heart aches for the little girl who experienced so much loss at such a tender age. But we are who we are from the sum total of our experiences, both good and bad, no? Our tapestry is filled with light and dark. I also come from a broken home and multiple moves and books were my anchor, my home, my joy.
I knew I would be a writer when I was 12, after reading Adventures in Two Worlds by AJ Cronin. I wanted to be just like him, having lived an adventurous life before settling down to write. I always thought I’d be a grandmother first–but I began writing once my children arrived in this world. And it was like coming home! And nearly two decades later, I’m returning to the way I used to write, more from the imagination. I believe I shall write until the day I die.
Thank you for your heartfelt comments, Vijaya. “It was like coming home.” That’s exactly how I felt. I believe that I will, too, write until the day I die.
Heather,
This was beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing your journey.
Julie
Thanks, Julie. 💕
Money (spit take my coffee)! Fame (hardly). My reason for writing is the reward of the response from readers. From a socially awkward student giving me his school ribbon and a hug after a talk (tears welling up, his teacher and me), having a parent email that her son got caught reading my book in class (under his desk), but it was okay because he was reading, to adults saying they enjoyed reading about science and now understand some issue better or have become more aware. A new publisher recently asked if I wanted to make a living from my upcoming book with them – hahaha….that would be dreamy, but so not realistic. It’s the reward from readers that’s my motivation – and a somewhat unexpected discovery that as a scientist, I truly enjoy making science engaging and understandable through non-technical writing and especially fun fiction for young readers.
It’s funny you said the unexpected benefit of writing is the inadvertent teaching that you do. I’ve felt the same way with my historical fiction. I was a teacher long before a writer, and I’ll always be a teacher at heart.
Thanks for your insightful comments.
Heather, this is a moving post, and a reminder of the power of stories to explain, illuminate, and heal – although I don’t think any of us ever arrives at a moment where we are fixed. But as writers, we keep digging . We find rocks and bones and treasure. My heart broke as I read about your childhood, but when I finished reading, I felt uplifted by your journey. It takes courage to keep doing this work.
Thank you for your kind words, Susan. I agree that we are never healed, but I love the way you look at it: “we find rocks and bones and treasure.” How lovely and how true. Thanks for stopping by today.
Such a wonderfully honest and raw and deep-seeking essay, Heather. It’s a question worthy of reexamining often. (Really cool image, too. Seems… familiar ;)
So your last question (“When did you know you *had* to write?) combined with today’s (unusually) spring-like weather, and brought back a memory. A fairly clear one. Not of my teenage epiphanies or vows about storytelling, though I remember those too. This one took place at the tail end of my time in the business world.
We’d finished building our house, which at that time was our getaway cottage. Our beloved black lab Maggie had passed away. I had celebrated my 40th the previous summer. In those days, we came from Chicago to Michigan every weekend, leaving for work at about 4 am on Monday mornings. This particular spring Monday, I stayed back at the cottage because of an afternoon appointment with a client, further up the coast. That morning I took Maggie’s successor (a black lab pup named Belle) for a long walk on the beach—something we’d rarely taken the time to do with poor Mag.
Belle and I got back, and I still had several hours before I needed to get going. We sat on the porch drinking coffee—something I hadn’t done on a weekday in YEARS. It was so quiet here. A thought sprang powerfully to mind: I wasn’t doing what I was meant to do. Life was passing too swiftly. The prior decade had been a blur. My forties would be, too.
My wife and I had built the house because of these types of feelings building inside of both of us, but I think they were feelings we were afraid to examine too closely. That day, I looked. I felt. The thought of finally writing came to me like the smell of spring on a lake breeze after a long winter.
I remember quickly hiding away the thought of writing. I couched it in phrases like: “We just need to feed our creative sides,” and “I can do carpentry… and other creative stuff.” For years, I avoided opening that mental box even to peek at it myself, let alone allow anyone else to see. It was so precious, so fragile.
But that day, I knew. I knew I *had* to write. It took about three more years to actually get words on a page, but it was inevitable; sort of like a dormant disease that I knew would either manifest itself in visible symptoms or become a part of what kills me.
Your post is a solid reminder that I am doing what I am meant to do. Which in turn reminds me that none of the pub stuff really matters. In other words, only the stuff surrounding the love (the blur) changes. The love itself is at the core of who I am.
Lovely essay, my friend. Thanks being so honest and brave, and for awakening my memory.
Thanks for sharing that memory, Vaughn. It’s equally poignant and beautiful–we can’t let our lives pass us by without doing the things we love and that we’re called to do. Your story is very inspiring. Meanwhile, did you use that image, too?! LOL. Thanks for your insightful comments as always, friend.
Oh no, I’ve never seen this lovely image. I just have a bit of of an obsession for stormy seascapes. (I feel like I share waaaay too many, lol.)
Thanks for your kind words, but you’re the inspiration here. You definitely touched a lot of souls today, including mine. Thanks again!
Oh, yours are the most beautiful. Honestly, I want a triptych of your gorgeous lake!
Ah, Heather, what a gorgeous post. This and this:
Thank you.
Thanks, dear. <3 I dedicate it to you. xx
Great post today. Lots to think about. I write for the mystery of it all. I love discovering stories and characters and what they show me about life and relationships. I can’t remember when I decided to be a writer. I don’t think there was a time when stories, reading them or writing them, weren’t a strong part of my life. After writing 3 novels and numerous short stories, I know this is who I am.
I like that! Writing for the mystery of it… Thanks for stopping by today, Paula!
I adore you so much. Yes, the pain shows us the answers—which is why we write. <3
And I adore you. You help teach me how to channel the pain. xxx
Yes. I find many writerunboxed very interesting- some are inspiring too. This one got to me. Made me consider why I write, and even more importantly, why I don’t write.
Thanks very much
I’m so glad you found it inspiring, Judith. :) Happy writing!
Yes, yes to all of this. Great essay, laden with truth.
Thank you, Margaret! <3
The comparison part, that’s super hard, right? Especially when you end up spending most of your time around other writers (even virtually and that may be worse).
My dad asked me once if I’d still write if I wasn’t doing it to publish novels. I said I would, but with a different focus or kind of intensity, most likely. We’re always writing (at some point, for most of us) don’t know if what we’re writing will be a published book.
I knew I wanted to be a novelist when I was about ten. Then I forgot, and remembered when I was 42.
What a lovely, kind-hearted post, Heather.
Thanks, friend. <3 It’s funny, I loved books and writing and forgot, too, just as you did. I forgot for about 15 years and it suddenly found me again. Thanks for your comments.
Thank you for this post, Heather. “Because it helps me make sense of the world,” hit home with me. That’s why. Regarding when: I’ve wanted to write since I began to read (also at an early age). My family was very social and involved (all extroverts except my artist mother and me), and I loved to sneak away and travel to other worlds. I started writing at six or seven when my dad gave me one of those huge old industrial typewriters for my birthday. I haven’t stopped, though it was many, many years before publication. I’m recently questioning the career aspect of the whole thing, because those practical business requirements can certainly rob you of any joy you feel while creating. That said, I could never give up writing. I tried once and felt as if I’d lost my soul. I find great joy in connecting with readers, and this community of writers is absolute gold.
You said it, Brunonia! Our writing community is incredible. They really keep us going. And I’m sending you loads of determination and spirit to face the ugly sides of the business. They are many and they are brutal, but we are the creators so in the end, they need us way more than we need them. Write on, friend!
Thank you for sharing your beautiful story. Uplifting. Pulled me out of self-doubt. It was a Wednesday in third grade on Creative Writing Day when I discovered my passion and gift for writing. Today, after reading your column, I realized I can do this. THANK YOU!
YOU CAN DO THIS!!!! If I can do it, you can. Keep going and check back here for lots more inspiration and support!
I printed the quote and taped it to my computer screen.
Thanks for this and for the lovely post.
I hope it gives you the push you need to write beautiful words! Thanks for stopping by today.
It’s simple Heather: I write for revenge. When I was twelve years old, I was swimming in the ocean when I was tugged out by a small rip current that took me, amidst slamming waves, against the supports of a public pier. I screamed for help at the people looking down at me; no one seemed to react. I was terrified that I would die, while enraged that no one cared. In my agitation, I didn’t know that someone had called a lifeguard, who quickly rescued me.
Months later, for a class assignment, I wrote an essay in which I described in detail my fear, fury and despair. I’d show those idiots that ignored me! My teacher later read the story aloud, saying it was a vivid slice of life. At the end of the year, the school handed out student awards, and I was given a little cloisonné pin that said “Best Writer.”
So I turned from revenge being my writing motivation to that of wanting to be petted on the head. I still want that now. (And, by Odin’s beard, I do love a good story. So I try to write one once in a while.)
My books are essentially ignored by most of God’s green world, but once in a while, someone pets me on the head, and that’s enough.
Thanks for the gristle and blood (and flower petal and sunlight) of this post.
“(And, by Odin’s beard, I do love a good story. So I try to write one once in a while.)”
That was a great story! And isn’t living well the best revenge?
What a great story, Tom. Reader comments are like air sometimes, aren’t they? They feed us. They keep the creative inside us alive. Wishing you many, many more of those golden nuggets ahead!
Nothing like a good cry over your coffee. ; ) This is really beautiful Heather, and just what I needed to hear today. Thanks. Your friend is very lucky.
Thank you, Sheri! I’ll share a secret. Writing it made me teary-eyed, too!
Beautifully said. I was freed from a few years of writer angst by just letting my stories be told for no other reason than happiness in creating.
Thank you for sharing your heart.
I think that’s a great idea for all of us, at some point. Put aside all else and just write for the sheer joy of it. Thanks for your comments today!
I started writing to be different. My family are solid citizens but not creative types. I did not fit in. Writing–poetry, in my teens–was a defiant assertion of my self.
Unfortunately, my poetry also sucked…until a teacher, an English poet, opened my eyes to revision. That weekend I began fitting words together in a different way. The poem that resulted was published.
I still love, more than anything, fitting the words together. Getting them just right. Reading is a moment by moment, line by line experience. We cannot make that experience for readers without paying attention to every choice.
Luckily, for me, that is not work. It’s play–pure pleasure. It’s not the only reason I write, but it’s a big one and I’m appreciating my good fortune all the more today. Thanks.
I love, love, love to read poetry, Ben, but I am terrible at writing it. You have a gift! It’s so lovely to see that you enjoy it and are not burdened by it. It’s a breath of fresh air. Thanks for your comments today.
This is so incredibly good. I’ve been struggling with my writing for the past two years, undoubtedly due to the immense upheaval in my personal life (husband’s infidelity, the subsequent divorce, becoming a single mom, learning and healing from it all). I’m slowly starting to come back to the writing and find myself giddy at the thought of diving back into my fictional world. Like you, books were my home. They still are. And I want to write them just as badly as I did when I started in the sixth grade. I’ve been unable to work on my novel for months – but I’m hoping that will now change. Thanks so much for this, Heather!
It will now change! Let that zeal for it carry you through to the end of another manuscript! On another note, I’m sorry for your hardships. :(
Thank you for this marvellous article – a real help:))
Thanks for stopping by today!
Yours and everyone else’s reasons for writing are so lovely and deeply moving and did I say lovely? I’m afraid I’m much more pragmatic. Writing (especially editing and polishing) gives me a deep sense of self-satisfaction that I don’t seem to get from anything else. Sometimes it feels like a bit of sleight of hand or a magic trick that I’ve somehow (unknowingly) pulled off, when I’m able to string together words, sentences, phrases from nothing. That’s why I write. At least I think that’s why I write.
Your reason is as good as all the others! Also, writing may not be tied to anything deeply personal now, but it very well may in the future. It’s funny that way, and one never knows. :) Thanks for stopping by today!
In so many ways you touched the minds and hearts of writers. Thanks, Heather.
Thank you, Beth. <3
Oh Heather, love this, love this!! When am I seeing you again to give you a hug? Will you be at Kris’ reading in the city? I know you’re a real journey away! I am printing out to reread and will share. x Stephanie
P.S. I am not going to HNS this year but I think you knew that.
I will be and I will be ready for many, many hugs!
P.S. I will miss you dearly at HNS! :(
I love this! In other words, it’s a deeply psychological (I take “spiritual”) catalyst for you (and for me and for many others), so well illustrated here. I’m glad I found this today as I took up once more, from where I had left off yesterday, on my writing journey. Thank you, Heather.
I love this! In other words, it’s a deeply psychological (I take “spiritual”) catalyst for you (and for me and for many others), so well illustrated here. I’m glad I found this today as I took up once more where I had left off on my writing journey. Thank you, Heather.
That’s so wonderful to here, Anne. Thank you for your comments.
Heather, this post has all the elements of good story; emotion, lyricism, meaning, and provoking questions in the reader.
My journey into the written word took flight when I realized that books contained a distilled power of reality, one that life lived by my eleven-year-old self, never saw, but longed for. Decades later, that still holds true. Everyday reality can often leave us asking as Peggy Lee’s song did, “Is that all there is?” The reason we authors work long and hard is to capture the bones and blood of reality that our discursive daily mind misses.
You spoke of knowing and then forgetting about writing. I took a long loop into singing and songwriting and to this day as a novelist it is the sound of the words read aloud that makes writing a sacred endeavor. The fame and money thing, that takes care of itself, or it doesn’t. That brings us back to passion.
I didn’t know that, about moves being like a death.
I was fourteen before I’d lived twelve consecutive months in one house. Mind you, a lot of those moves were back and forth between two familiar communities (albeit one had high population turnover).
And books… books are always there. Like Jane Eyre in her window-seat, books provide a pocket space we can curl up into, withdrawing from the ravages of the world. But the Best books, ah, the Best books! Those are the ones that send us out from our hiding-hole with a new strength, ready to face whatever the world throws at us.
I want to write the Best books. And I guess that’s why I write, even if my books aren’t Best yet.
Coming to this a day late (because of copyediting I needed to finish yesterday!) but wanted to join the conversation. Great post, and I love that quote you leave us with.
A large part of the impetus I had for writing early on was the desire to record the things I noticed that no one else in my life seemed to. I was a highly observational child, attuned to every little detail when something interested me (and completely tuned out to my parents telling me to do something–I was already so busy with important stuff, like bugs). So when I wrote it was to capture fleeting moments and feelings and those odd questions that pop into your head. To make something insignificant significant in the telling.
When I finally started writing fiction in earnest, with an eye to publication, it was perhaps because I wanted to BE noticed and significant. I had a job that was fine but not exciting or really going anywhere. I had a comfortable life. I had a young son (and felt my individual identity quietly slipping away as no one ever asked me about anything anymore BUT him–is he sleeping, is he eating, is he walking).
I had quit a graduate school program that wasn’t quite what I had expected and I didn’t really have time for because I was still working full time. And having been out of school, where I was always noticed, awarded, and SEEN, for nearly a decade, I guess I felt like I was hurtling headlong into a life of complete insignificance. And I’ve recently found out I’m an Enneagram Type 3: The Achiever. Success-driven and image-conscious. So doing nothing just wasn’t going to work for me. I was tired of merely consuming. I wanted to create.
It took nearly a decade between starting to really write and having my first novel published. I kept going because I knew I had interesting and important things to say and I wanted to be in conversation with other people about it. How many people interact with those things is not really my business, I guess. But just to have people read what I’ve written and talk about it and think about it–that’s success for me. And I hope it will always be that way.
I just wanted to say thank you, Heather. I appreciate your honesty about the writing journey. “I write because books have always been my home. My shelter from the storm. I write because it gives me joy.” Your words are encouraging. Thank you!!
Your title caught my eye. Thank you for taking the time to write it.
My mother was a librarian, so as a young child I spent my summers and after school hours at the library. Books — the perfect babysitter!
By elementary school I was writing my own. I loved everything about it and my artsy friends illustrated them. Got married out of college and because of my husband’s job we moved a lot. Not knowing anyone in these strange cities I would sit and write. I did nothing with these manuscripts. I’d finish one and start another. I did it because that’s what I loved doing and it made me happy.
Years later I’m complaining to my husband about my writing and how I’m mad and upset and I’m going to quit. He listened very patiently and then said, “You do realize that you have always loved to write until you made it into a business.” That stopped me right there.
Today I write because it’s what I love to do. Whether anybody, other than a few chosen friends, will ever read my latest two books . . . I’m happy.
I don’t think that’s a bad goal.
This article is inspiring and the perfect message for me today (actually for many days). Refocusing on the passion rather than the industry is key. I needed the reminder. I’m saving your words and will refer to them often. Thank you!
I want to hug that little girl. I remember being alone in our dark den, making up worlds, skipping classes as young as 7 years old to hide in the school library between the stacks, with my friends–the stories. Thank you for a beautiful post, a reminder WHY we do this in the face of so much bullshit rejection.
Grateful for this post as I struggle with my own ‘why’ — feeling a bit like a fraud. But like you, books were an escape, a home, a safe place — and I’m going to draw back on that as I sit down today to chip away at my writing goals.
Beautiful post, Heather. Thanks for sharing all of this.
I was watching something the other day that was brilliantly written. It tickled my intellect and my emotions and it twisted in just the right way at the end, and it made me leap out of my chair and say “That! THAT’s what I want to do for my readers!”
I want to be part of that great sea of connection.
Guess I’d better keep finishing stories, then.
Thanks!