Why We Write

I had a conversation not long ago with my good friend Kathy, fellow writer, human dynamo, and all around inspiration.  I was having trouble finding an agent to shop my latest novel, and she was doing her utmost to keep me from getting discouraged.  Her point was that in the end I really had no choice but to soldier on, since the alternative – not finding an audience for my book – would make the very act of writing it in the first place all but meaningless.  That writing is a form of communication, and without a reader out there, you’re pretty much just beating off.

Ordinarily I might agree with her.  I am, after all, one of those people who’s always thinking about the next thing, the goal not met, the step not taken, and the moment I finish any project, I want to share it with the world.  But what if there were no world?  No dreams of fame, no praise or profit, just the act of writing itself?

I know we’ve all had them.  Those moments when we surprise ourselves.  When a phrase or a sentence pops up out of nowhere, like Athena, fully-formed, from Zues’ head.  When a word you didn’t know you knew turns out to be the one word, the only word, for that spot.  When a character finally breaks her chains, suddenly says something or does something you didn’t expect, and the beautifully-crafted plot you’d devised is rendered obsolete.  Writing is discovery.  Not knowing what you want to say till after you’ve sat down and said it.  It is the moment of creation, the spark the arcs the gap, and everything that comes afterword, the words themselves, merely fossils.  Artifacts.

Not that artifacts don’t matter.  They’re the only way we can capture that spark, know there even was a Zeus, or a man called Sherlock Holmes.  And if I had to choose between one or the other, the act itself or its echo, I don’t know which I’d choose.  But I do know this.  If what happens to our words gains primacy, if our obsession with notoriety, or our frustrations at not finding it, starts to sour our souls, strip the joy from the craft of writing, then that would be the real crime.  A crime that makes something as harmless, as human, as beating off seem mild by comparison.