Why Writers Write—I think!

Whenever I have a Q & A with elementary students, someone inevitably asks me why I write. I always manage some sort of answer which I believe to be true, but I never feel satisfied with that answer. I say something to the effect that I grew up loving to read and wanted to see if I could tell stories, too. But, the entire answer is that I am not entirely sure.

I’ve been writing stories, essays, the occasional poem here and there for a long time even though I’ve only had books published now in my later life. When I was much younger raising children, gainfully employed, working on advanced degrees, and moving frequently, I wrote whenever I had the chance and dutifully mailed off query letters and manuscripts to acquiring editors now and then. I wrote children and adult short stories mostly and the occasional article, sending these to magazine or newspaper editors. I didn’t do this often because sending out my materials took a lot of work, postage, and patience. Still, over those years I had some things accepted for publication and a strong nibble for a book publication that ended as only that—a nibble. I should have been encouraged by that nibble, but wasn’t and life marched on. I don’t mean to ramble on and on but am trying to work out a better answer to why I write than “I’m not sure.”

One thing I do know about my writing is that I want to be read. I don’t care about being seen, but having someone read what I write matters to me. Good, bad, or mediocre, what I write is a part of me. I suspect that is true for all writers.

Many years ago, I came across a book called Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon. It was a book that explained so much to me—though, of course, not everything about why I love to read and write. When I say I love to write, I don’t mean writing is an easy, relaxing occupation. It is anything but that. Trying to write well (and I do say trying) is a heavy lift! German novelist Thomas Mann once said “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

My books and manuscripts—especially the two long novel manuscripts I keep on my desk and continue to work on—have gone through numerous revisions and drafts. One book is 92,000 words and the other is 80,000. So going through numerous drafts adds up to writing several hundreds of thousands of words on those two book manuscripts. I will likely never get them accepted by an agent or editor. So, why do I keep knocking my head against the proverbial wall! I’ve asked myself that question many times.

For one thing, I love building, the act of creating something, and I am a very poor carpenter and a poorer stone mason. But, words are nice and stackable. They can build whole worlds, cozy spaces, and interesting characters. I adore interesting people and sometimes build them myself. So this is where Fay Weldon and Jane Austen come in. In her book, Weldon writes letters to her fictional niece who does not appreciate having to read Jane Austen in college. The niece finds Austen “boring, petty, and irrelevant” when the “world is in crisis, and the future catastrophic…” (Weldon 7). Fay Weldon wrote this book in 1984. More than 40 years later, little has changed. The world is still in peril.

Weldon then writes: “ My dear child! My dear pretty little Alice, now with black and green hair. How do I explain Literature to you…? You are bright enough. You could read when you were four. But then, sensibly, you turned to television for your window on the world: you slashed your appetite for information, for stories, for beginnings, middles, and ends, with the easy tasty substances of the screen…” (id.). Later she goes on to say: “Let me give you, let me share with you, the City of Invention. For what novelists do (I have decided…) is to build Houses of the Imagination, and where houses cluster together there is a city… . It is the nearest we poor mortals can get to the Celestial City; it glitters and glances with life, and gossip, and color, and fantasy… .Those who founded it, who built it, house by house, are the novelists, the writers, the poets. And it is to this city that the readers come, to admire, to learn, to marvel, and explore.” (11).

Several pages later, Weldon tells Alice, “the good builders, the really good builders, carry a vision out of the real world and transpose it into the City of Invention and refresh and enlighten the reader, so that on his or her return to reality, that reality itself is changed, however minutely.” (id.) So, perhaps, there you have it. Perhaps, writers are inventors of the unscientific kind. Perhaps writers hear the siren’s call to build, create, and invent a made-up world with interesting characters that resonate with readers who will see themselves in that invented city and see a truth in that made up time and place. Maybe writers, at least the very good ones, change minutely readers’ understanding of reality. Perhaps most writers will never be that really good writer they strive to be, but they see the Celestial City just over the next hill and the effort to get ever closer worthwhile.

Additionally, Weldon says, ”Writers, builders, good or bad…are usually polite to one another, and a great deal kinder than the people who visit, as outsiders. Builders vary in intellect, aspiration, talent, and efficiency: they build well or badly in different suburbs of the City. …A writer’s all, Alice, is not taken up by the real world. There is something left over: enough for them to build these alternative, finite realities {13). So, through this metaphor, Weldon explains why serious writers dedicate so much time, energy, and disappointment to writing. Still, the “I’m not sure” explanation may sometimes serve one’s readers as well.

Works Cited

Weldon, Faye. Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austin. Taplinger Publishing Company, Inc.New York, 1984.

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