I frequently ask myself the question, “Why do I have to write?” I think it’s a crucial question if one wants to survive the ups and downs of the writing life for the long haul. As a visual, tactile person, who sees strange visions of the story and feels the emotion of it before getting “ideas”, someone who is more inclined to create things that can be picked up and touched, why do I feel this burning need to write stories? I’ve always been a storyteller, ever since my days as an overly-imaginative kid running circles in my parent’s living room, telling stories out loud to myself (I never said novelists weren’t crazy). But why?
I hit on the reason awhile ago, but typically for me I’ve struggled to articulate it. It had to do with expressing ideas and beliefs, with drawing people into another world, and by doing so, putting them off their guard, so they might be willing to examine my admittedly odd ideas about the world, what it is and what it should be, with less prejudice. Not that I would necessarily change them, but that they might become willing to open their eyes and see something outside of themselves, at least while reading my work. In a recent email to her list, Holly Lisle said:
“My job as a writer is to create the best work I can, to raise the level of dialogue, to challenge my readers to see the world in new ways and to think new thoughts, to present to them worlds and ideas they have not met before in ways that make them hungry to discover more.”
There it is. She summed up my main reasons for wanting to write. I want to be able to say to other people, “The way you see the world, your fundamental premises, may be wrong. Why do you assume the segregation of children and old people is ‘normal’? Why do you get all your food from cardboard boxes or plastic tubs? Is the big, important job they promised if you went to school really big and important after all, or are you a wage slave?”
Another reason I want to write is because I am endlessly fascinated by other people and the inner workings of their minds. Visual arts can express the internal state of the artist, and possibly of the observer of the art, but it is limited in its ability to reach into the mind of another person, or many persons, and explore their every thought and feeling intimately, to uncover what drives them and what makes them laugh or shout or go quiet with awe.
I feel some tension with the writer’s life. Words are not my first language; feelings and dream-symbols are the language of my mind. But nothing fascinates me more than people and all the many puzzles that make them up.
© KY Craft
Your reasons for writing are admirable, as is your courage to write, despite it being in a “second” language. :)
(And wow, beautiful picture..!!)
Nothing can beat the flash of realization that comes from the “aha!” moment. The thick fog of uncertainty that prevents you from seeing what you know is there folds out of existence, leaving nothing but you and the “aha!”. Everything makes sense at that point. Hold on to that and it will take you places, I bet!