Friends! Friends’ Pets! I’m so glad you’re back!
PS: If you ever want, find me on Instagram – I do a #SquishySunday each week where I share pics of my critters, and demand pics of yours. So share some with me, use the hashtag, @mention me – I will never be upset to be tagged in animal pictures.
Anywhoo, this week, I thought I’d stream-of-consciousness about why I write.
(If only my AP English teacher could see me now. No one grumbled more about stream of consciousness than me. Sorry Mrs. Graglia!).
When I started writing – back at the tender age of probably about 9 or 10 – it was because stories were how I could make anything happen. They were my way of daydreaming, in a sense. I was the star of every story, and they all ended happily ever after. I even wrote a kid’s book once that I illustrated myself – that “book” will NEVER see the light of day. It was terrible. But as an 11 year old, I thought I was amazing! And because my mother was a writer, she never discouraged me. She never told me how awful my story was, or how terrible my drawings were. She just presented that horrible book to her critique group friends (who are really like family to me at this point) like it was a masterpiece, sure of being published.
So I continued to write. My voice and vocabulary and skills improved, but the content remained pretty similar. But as I got into middle and high school, I started writing as a means of escape. I was (and still am to an extent) a painfully shy person. I had a few really good friends, and I could sort of talk to people, but I was terribly self-conscious and I preferred the worlds that I created. I could be who I wanted to be. I could do what I wished I could do. I could succeed at literally anything.
I don’t think I strayed away from me being the heroine of my stories until after I met my husband. With him, I didn’t need to dream about so many things, because I had them. That was when I really started writing. Sure, I wrote tens of thousands of words before this point, but they were mine. They were for me. This was the point in life when I started thinking about other people reading my stories. I had actual discussions about plot and voice and story arcs and continuity and characters.
And that was what grabbed me, held on, and as of yet has not let go.
Characters. I am a VERY character driven person (ask my husband how I watch movies). A story can be terrible, but if I’m in love with a character, I will follow that person to the ends of the earth. And vice versa, if the story is incredible, but I can’t relate to or even like the characters, I generally lose interest very quickly. So it seems only natural that I would write my stories at the whims of my characters – who are all too real to me (as many authors can attest).
I talked so much about them, thought so much about them, wrote so much about them – that eventually they became real to me, and they talked to me. They wrote the story, I was just the scribe. I can’t even remember how many times I had planned for something to happen, and as I was writing, things took a hard left turn and I never got to write the scene I had planned. There were moments of shock when I wrote something that I really didn’t see coming. I may have even cried once or twice because of things that happened that I never planned to happen.
These days, writing is still an escape for me. I think it really always will be. But more, now, I write because I have to write. I write because I need to know the end of these stories. When a character finds me, I can’t leave things well enough alone until he or she has had their say. I have to follow them wherever they’re going, until we reach the end together.
The answer to this question will differ for every writer, and yet I feel like it all boils down to the same thing – at least I hope it does. Writer’s write because they love it. If that’s not at the base of a writer’s motivation, I don’t believe it will stand the test of time. Writing is hard. It’s competitive and full of rejection and won’t make you rich (unless you’re that really, really, really, really, really lucky one-in-a-million). So if it’s not for love, how can anyone stand all those blows against the ego and self-esteem?
I love writing. I especially love my characters and their stories. I love their worlds and their shenanigans and their chronicles. And so long as even one of them keeps talking to me, I will continue to write, and escape into the worlds they create with me.
You’re always welcome to come visit…
