Why we write, why it hurts, why it pleases

People are writing their heads off these days.

More people than ever are writing – and not just because our national and world populations are the largest in history. A higher percentage of people write today for … what reason?

Why we write was the topic of the July 29 edition of the National Public Radio program Talk of the Nation. The idea for the program came from Publishers Weekly, which is running a series of essays called Why I Write, which poses the question to various writers.

Talk of the Nation had a few published authors as guests on the program, but quickly opened the phones to callers who lived the writing life, whether as a vocation or avocation.

So why do people write? For many different reasons. Here are some of the musings and reasons offered by guests and callers to the program:

• There’s an amazing high I get from writing, even if it’s a difficult subject. I feel elated while I’m writing. It’s difficult to sit down and write, but once I get started it’s just a gorgeous feeling.
• I write stories because I love to make up places and people and conversations. Writing is acceptable lying. I used to lie a lot when I was a little kid – I don’t know why – and got punished for it. So I began writing and found this kind of lying to be okay with everyone.
• Sometimes I feel like the experiences I have don’t belong to me until I nail them down with words.
• There’s something both emotionally satisfying and physically satisfying when you finally see your work as a finished book.
• I think a person needs to be miserable to write. The greatest writers have been miserable. The two or three of the greatest country songwriters – Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash – are miserable people, but they love living in misery.
• I channel the things that I’m going through.
• The writer Paul Hendrickson told me that when you write you always want to capture the “cruel radiance of what is,” which is a quote from Walker Evans. Every writer wants to capture what is, not what you think it is, but what it really is.
• There are times when writing is like beating my head against the wall. It really depends on the day. Some days it comes very easily for me.
• When we engage in language we engage in something that is specifically and primally human. To be able to do that on a daily basis is an incredible high, and there are also incredible lows.
• While I’m driving or listening to music scenes will come to my mind and I want to get them down and expand them and make stories out of them.
• I write because I have to – or the words get all backed up and I explode.
• I write to make sense of the world.
• I write but, my god, it takes a herculean effort just to reach mediocre.
• It’s about being courageous and not being afraid to put down on the page something that’s deep within you.

To get the full impact, listen to the program in its entirely. Click on this link to stream a recording of the program over your computer or to download to your smart phone, iPod or other MP3 player.

And please use the below Comments box to tell me why you write.

 

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