Why I Write

Confessions of an odd fish

I write because I’m the odd fish, the strange fellow.

I’m the one at the party who wants to go into things too deeply.

The one whom a chance phrase whisked off on a tangent, so that I forgot to listen to the rest of what you were saying. Even though it was important, and I was interested in what you had to say, and I liked you.

I’m the over-emotional one, the one who knows that, if he lets himself go, he’ll sob inconsolably through that sad song, that schmaltzy scene in that crappy movie and for minutes after. So he doesn’t let himself go, not in company.

I’m the over-thinker. The one who wakes up in a cold sweat at three in the morning because I wanted to write something nice and now I worry that you took it the wrong way. But then it turns out you didn’t, after all. Or did you?

I’m the one who’s dancing in his chair, but when he gets up to dance, he feels self-conscious, and all sense of rhythm leaves him. So he doesn’t dance, unless he has his instrument to hide behind.

The one who would never open his mouth to sing, not for 40 years. Because he didn’t want to make a fool of himself. But now he accepts his foolishness, sings anyway. Although it’s better if he lets his instrument sing for him.

So I let my words do the dancing. I let my stories do the singing.

I over-think my characters on to the page and delve as deeply as I please.

I try to evoke in my reader the emotions that stir me.

I write about things I would never talk about. I’ve written things in this space that I’ve never expressed to anyone.

I pick up the thread of that long-ago conversation, when you thought I wasn’t listening, but I was. I weave it into a story, a character who has something of you, something of me, something of neither of us.

I enjoy improvising on the page as much as I enjoy noodling on my instrument. Let’s just start and see what strange little songs we can make up.

I write for me, but I also write for you, maybe even a specific you. I’m disappointed when you don’t read what I wrote for you. But I understand that you’re busy too, and besides, you too came here to write.

Maybe you leave without warning or explanation, and I feel a little bereft, and a little concerned for you, because maybe you’re hurting. Or then again, maybe you’re just too busy being happy. After all, I don’t really know you at all. Just your most intimate thoughts cast across a computer screen like stardust.

So then I write for another you. But I write with a reader in mind. That person who gets me, who accepts me for being me.

So probably not a real person at all, just another one of the characters in my head.

Thank you Trisha Traughber for prompting this train of thought with your excellent question What Keeps You Writing? (Vagabond Voices prompt).

Dedicated to absent friends RTT, JB, CN, AP — and to friends who are still here. You make this worthwhile, so keep doing your splendid thing.

What keeps you writing, friend?