Why Write?

            I was never a big writer until I began college. I have ADD (which I use to great effect now, but which used to cause me all sorts of trouble in high school), and a reading problem caused by learning to read using whole word recognition from memorizing the books my parents read to me and then teaching myself to read the memorized words, rather than learning through phonetics. I am a slow reader who requires a lot of breaks. Writing is even worse for me. It will take me several hours to write this paper, and I will get bored and play on Facebook, read a few Wikipedia articles, take a shower, go on a run, and maybe wash some dishes during the course of writing the first draft. I might even get a nap in there, if my kids will abide it. That said, I will keep what I’ve written turning in my head while I avoid the actual work. I do a lot of revision in the shower.

            Anyway, it wasn’t until college (begun five years later than my peers) that I knew who I was and how best to turn my “deficits” into benefits, and only then was I ready to sit down and really write, rather than just doing the least amount of work possible to [maybe] pass a class. In the past year, I have started publishing a serialized novel on Amazon.com. I’m really enjoying the experience of uncovering the story and learning about the characters as they emerge from the base clay of what I teach my students about standard plot structure. I think Stephen King (a really very under-valued writer of character and mood) said in his book On Writing something like: being a writer is like being an archaeologist. The story is already waiting there under the soil, and it is up to the author to uncover it.

            Though writing was, and is, still difficult for me, I find it clarifying and calming, and at the same time exciting and eye-opening. As far as my personal story goes, writing is an act of exploration for me; it helps me find what I’m looking for, whether it’s a story, a central theme, or a personal revelation. But there remains a larger question, right? The question of Writing: Why do we do it? Why do people, as a species, write? There’s the obvious, pragmatic, use of the technology of putting thoughts into symbols that can be preserved semi-permanently so others may make use of discoveries. But why novels? Why journals? Why this paper that I’m writing write now? The answer lies in the way that we think. In Write for Insight: Empowering Content Area Learning, Grades 6-12, it says “[we] must struggle with the details, wrestle with the facts, and rework raw information and dimly understood concepts into language [we] can communicate to someone else.” (Strong, 2006) If we want to really learn information, and not regurgitate it, we must interact with it, through writing (and through communities of learning) where we can teach what we have discovered to others. In short: we don’t really know what we know until we take the time to organize it, and the most pragmatic way to do so is to write it all down.

            I often find this to be true. As an experiment, let’s see what happens when I write a paragraph about why I don’t seem to be able to settle, politically—not just in this Presidential race, but ever. The experiment begins now…

            I am an ideologically moderate but emotionally passionate person. This results in situations where small changes in temperament or political circumstances can cause me to lean conservative or liberal in what appear to be dramatic swings (because of the emotional element, I can get quite vociferous).  The swings of political opinion are not actually very great; it’s just that I stand so close to the middle of the scale that only slight adjustments in weight on the left or right play major havoc with my political leanings.

            I am an introspective person. You can see that in how I began my experiment by trying to determine what the variables were, and I looked inside first, rather than blaming my friends for being idiots with their heads up their butts, or casting stones at the candidates for…well, for being idiots with their heads up their butts, too. I determined my own limiting factors and how those affected my reaction to changes in external variables. I learned a lot about myself in writing that paragraph, and it will probably become a blog entry as soon as I’m done with this assignment.

            But why would I feel the need to make this personal piece of information public? What service could such a transmission of data from writer to reader serve?

            The first reason might be that readers of my blog may suddenly see some of the same traits within themselves. They may have been living for years wondering why they couldn’t remain static in their support of a party. They wanted to belong, but there was no group into which they fit. Now that I have written about a pattern of behavior and/or belief that they recognize within themselves, the reader can apply that same introspection to their own situation, and maybe feel better for it.

            The second reason was summed-up nicely by Pearl S. Buck, who once said that “Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment.” Essentially, what she is talking about is the need for community in creative endeavors. There is no doubt that a certain catharsis can be reached in the simple act of creating something new—something expressive; but the implication of externalizing an emotional hue as a physical product is that the creator is lending permanence in the hope that others might witness and empathize with the piece. We are a social species that is alone in the natural world in its realization and fear of mortality. As far as we know, the natural urge to create art is uniquely human. Writing, and creation in general, is our attempt to lash out at the death that we are guaranteed from the moment of conception; creation is our lowly effort at an immortal act, and we need each other---if for no other reason—as witnesses to our creative memorial acts.

Strong, W. (2006). Write for Insight: Empowering Content Area Learning, Grades 6-12. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.