Nov 27, 2010

Why Do You Write?

Writers, business people, artistes and inventors all talk about this word..creativity. For me, all I am right now is a student and aspiring writer so I think about the creativity that produces works of art: poems, stories, articles. What is my creative process and how does it work? What gives me inspiration? 
Its funny I have been doing a lot of writing all my life but I have never paid mind to how my process works. It was only after a long dry spell ended and I could feel inspiration flowing in my veins again did I stop to wonder, what is the secret? I think I'd look back and realise at some point that this is the period when I transitioned from a casual scribbler to someone who actually takes his writing seriously. Because if I understand my creative process I can recreate it at will, not so? And consistency is really what I need right now. 

So I decided to answer the question "Why do I write?"
I am a resident in a world of ideas. Ideas inflame me and power me more than anything. And when I write, I take those ideas and arrange them with words into images that can fix themselves in the minds of others. So in essence, I write to force a part of me in others. Its bullying of the most sublime type, but that is what all writing is.   In writing, my unique vision of the world can grow into other people's experiences and for however briefly, live with them. And for me as an individual, its a way to etch whatever journey my imaginations make permanently in ink so that it will live with me, forever.

I write to tell a story, the story of the world both seen and unseen. The pictures I have in my head ask for expression and I find words that paint them right and try to put them to best use. 

But more than anything else, I write because I am a writer. That is one thing I will always be, whether 'good' writer or 'bad' I will always be a writer. Because when you really know who you are in your bones, you realize somethings only lead to one goal. Thats when it dawns on me that the question, why do I write doesnt really have an answer. Why do woodchucks chuck wood? Why do tigers have stripes? Its simply how they are. And so I am simply how I am. And if the most important thing in life is to know who you are, then I guess  I have achieved something in life. 
I might go through many places in my life. Law school, further studies in Politics and Business. But the whole time, my pen will keep moving, driven by the ideas in my head and the pictures that greet my eyes.

Now, its your turn. Why do you write?


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