Why Do I Write?

I was asked this question today

This morning I was tagged in a story by Vritant Kumar asking why we write as authors?

This is going to be a multi-part answer since I have been writing since I was a little girl, scribbling quietly into a notebook all the happenings of my day. I still have that notebook in my office, those first scribblings of 8-year-old me into my first diary.

When I first started writing all those years ago, I wrote for myself. I wrote because I felt alone and had no one to share my innermost thoughts with. I didn’t dare to speak them aloud for fear of being shamed or guilted about my thoughts. I wrote into those little notebooks to get the feelings out from inside, so that I could unburden myself.

In the 8th grade, we had a unit in my English class about how song lyrics were poetry. I remember it vividly as an ah-ha moment. Something clicked for me, since I was an avid musician. Then, I began to birth poetry forth from my tourtured teenage soul into the world.

At the beginning, I just wrote for my classes, so that I could get a good grade. But then, everyone started liking my poetry. So I would write poems for my friends, my family, for special events. I was even asked to stand up and read them.

When I was 14, one of my poems was published in a national anthology. It was, ironically, a poem called “Hiding” which talked about how I felt I had to hide my feelings. I remember my dad printing it out and framing it on our wall. But he didn’t ask about the feelings behind it.

All through high school, I scribbled poetry in the corners of all my notebooks during class when I was supposed to be taking notes. It was the way I let all my feelings bleed onto the paper, expressing all the things that I wasn’t supposed to feel.

Poems about love, about life, about family, and poems about sadness.

My high school English teacher told me that I wrote like Sylvia Plath. At the time I took it as a compliment, but after knowing what happened to her, I wonder. Though he did seek me out 2 years ago and ask if I was still writing.

I write because I have always written. Because when you write, especially when you write poetry, you can lay all your feelings out on the page as art, and no one actually questions the feelings behind them. Even when you use imagery to write poems about how you are depressed and want to cut yourself, as I sometimes did back then.

In college, I still filled up all my notebooks with all those little lines. In between class notes for my psychology classes, and when I was working alone at night.

I also started going to poetry slam, and even though I didn’t slam, I would get up sometimes and do open mic before they started, reading my poetry in time with the improv jazz that filled the smoky room. That place felt like home for me for a long time.

I was always too shy to talk much to the other poets, but sometimes I would buy their books or CD’s to listen to at home. Some were motivational, some were political, some were sad, but all of them were raw and real and poignant to listen to.

As an adult, I co-wrote a song for a band that I played with, Reign Project, called You Killed Me. And that is how I got to open up my heart to my now-partner, because he cowrote the song with me, the band’s lead singer and songwriter.

During those song writing sessions, I would listen to him playing songs over and over during the writing process, and sometimes I would still scribble poems into my little notebooks. That was the only one that ended up being born into a song.

Then, a couple of years ago, I started blogging. I had read that writing a blog is a good prelude to writing a book, because it gets you to writing every day so that you are in the rhythm.

This wasn’t the first time I had dreamed about writing a book. I had dreamed about that for 20 years too, and had even started writing a couple over the years that I never finished.

Now, I am writing to help people overcome difficulties in their lives. I have been through a lot in my life, learned a lot, overcome a lot, and come out of the fire on the other side. That is what I want to help other people do. To come out on the other side of their troubles and find happiness.

That is why I write. I hope that through vulnerably sharing my own experience, other people may find something that resonates with them and that they can take the lessons that I have learned and apply them to their own lives.

Plus, I write because I have always written. Even now, when much of what I write is shared with you here online, there are still little notebooks in my office that I fill with my secret scribblings that are just for me.

Does that answer your question, Vritant Kumar? I write first for myself to get the emotions out onto paper in a way that I don’t know how to speak them. Then secondly, I write for other people, so that hopefully I can share something that resonates and helps other people.

Why do you write? How did you start? What keeps you going? Do you think you are ever going to stop writing?

Personally, I don’t think I can stop writing. Not as long as there are still feelings in my heart. That is what my writing is, my heart poured out onto the page.

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