25 Reasons to Write
Let’s face it, if you’ve ever had a flicker of desire to write a novel, you know writing is hard.
It’s overwhelming to get started, or to finish, or both.
It can get expensive if you decide you need help. Depending on how you like to learn, there are books, courses, communities, programs, and coaches all happy to take your cash.
Writing is time-consuming. You can spend hours trying to understand how to write or improve your writing. It’s easy to fall into the rabbit hole of learning new methods to revise or plot. Even easier to get stuck trying to set up the writing software or website everyone insists you need.
There is no straightforward path to writing. Perhaps you’ve dug in even deeper, and have learned there are a myriad of writing theories which often conflict. The more you investigate writing, the more confusing it can get. There’s no one right way to do anything, even though many people will tell you there is.
And assuming you’ve navigated all this, there’s still the struggle of writing. Of finding the time to write. Or trying to capture and communicate the living, breathing, magic you can see, hear, smell, and feel in your imagination.
Given how hard writing can be, you may wonder why anyone writes. And this is the very moment you need to understand why you write.
Why do You Write?
While this list isn’t exhaustive, use it to consider why writing is important to you. See what resonates with you when you say, “I write to…
- Belong to a community.
- Organize or explore my thoughts.
- Educate or serve others.
- Challenge and empower myself.
- Claim my voice.
- Process trauma.
- Right a wrong.
- Explore curiosity.
- Change the world.
- Rewrite history.
- Establish authority.
- Process emotions.
- Share my thoughts.
- Escape or relax.
- Experience the flow state.
- See what I can create.
- Discover truths.
- Promote healing.
- Develop my storytelling skills.
- Express an opinion.
- Support myself financially.
- Understand another culture.
- Connect with others.
- Capture my memories.
- Create something lasting and meaningful.
Maybe several of these reasons speak to you, and you have a compound why.
Or maybe your why started as one of these, but has developed into something more.
Your why is unique to you, and so, so important to understand.
Our Why Affects What We Write About
Not only is your why a secret weapon to keep you going when things get tough, it also provides insight into what you write about. This is helpful when it comes time to pick and complete your projects. So when your characters slump flat and lifeless in your prose, your fascinating world doesn’t translate onto the page, or you write yourself into a corner and can’t find a way forward… use your why to keep yourself going until you find a solution.
Whether you’re writing for yourself or others, as a hobby or for income, use your why as a guiding star to maintain your focus and write through any setback, frustration, fear, or even rejection.
So… why do you write?
Header Photo by Amelia Bartlett on Unsplash