Hix suggested that I should throw open a post to anyone who wants to talk about their reasons for writing.
So here goes! This is your post to talk about you. Why do you write?
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Exploring screenwriting and what it means to me.
About Me
- Sean_Molloy
- I am a screenwriter based in Wellington, New Zealand. Currently working on The Gap. Mostly happy.
8 comments:
I will have to have a bit more of a think before I put down some of the jumble of reasons why I write, but, in the meantime, I've come across this series in the Guardian newspaper called 'Why I write', where various writers are interviewed about why they write: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/whyiwrite
That's great - thanks!
When I was 14 I worked out I was a writer. I've never really tried to be anything else. Writing is very central to how I process and experience life. I wrote my first novel because not writing it was killing me.
Hmm. I could go on and on. There's a balance of pleasure and need to it.
Maybe the short answer is "Because I don't know what I would do if I didn't."
Dreadbeard has got pretty close to my reasons. On the one hand, I love writing - especially when it's going well (or feels like it's going well), but often even when it isn't. On the other, I get very antsy if I go for more than a week or so without writing. Since there are lots of other things competing for my time, it can sometimes take that antsy feeling to get me to push those things to one side and start getting words on the page.
I used to think it was 'social communication' but, in part, it is something else, since writing scripts is not 'social communication' - that is making films.
Writing scripts is, in part, an end to itself and it is a 'creative self-expression' - but I also often have the sense that people are just expressing (for want of a better analogy) 'a wave of the the sea of jung's collective unconscious' and that some writing is just surfing along those waves...
I write because it's fun. Not that it's fun all the time... but it's fun most of the time. And I get to make stuff up in my head without feeling that I'm just daydreaming. So it's sort of focused daydreaming.
There are so many reasons.
I started because I enjoyed reading, and then found I enjoyed writing. I carried on because people seemed to think I was quite good at it, and then because it was just what I did and who I was. I write because I want to be a writer. I write because it makes me happy – I enjoy it when the words turn out right, I enjoy it when what I write speaks to people, I enjoy sitting in a café and scribbling in my notebook and expressing myself. I write because I feel bad when I don’t write. I write because I want to be doing something bigger than myself, and I want to leave something behind when I’m gone.
I write because of that sweet spot where the effort doesn't feel like effort any more.
I write because I want to entertain myself.
I write because it sure seems like a better way to make a living than what I'm doing now (for all I love it).
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