Why Do You Write?

[Velkyn_Faer]

This is fairly simple, though the answers might not be. What drives you to write? This can be anything, from fanfiction to fantasy to sci-fi to romance. What makes you sit down at the keyboard or with that pen and paper and begin to form that world?

For myself, I just like the feeling of breathing to life a new world and people to inhabit that world. I have called it 'playing God' before, and I feel that term is a fairly good description. When you write, you can change history, the future, or the present. You can create a whole new living, breathing world with thousands of characters that are indeed out there, even if you do not write about them specifically.

Also, there's just something cool about the world you create, and the characters. You know them better than anyone else in the world, know every aspect of their lives. It's just a cool feeling.

So tell me, why do you write?

Velkyn

[Kali]

I set up people I like or find interesting or intriguing, give them a situation that's screwed up, and then try to completely immerse myself in those people.  I love that, when I really fall into the story and I have no knowledge of time passing or what's going on around me.  I love it when I stop because I have to pee RIGHT NOW and I realize it's six hours since I sat down at the computer.  I love it when I read back over stuff I've written and have literally no memory of having written certain phrases so that, in reading, I go, "Woah... Good one."

I love when I can scare myself, or thrill myself, or make myself cry.  I love crafting the scene just so to dredge up a particular emotion, or manipulating a setting to create just the right atmosphere.  I get downright giddy when a friend reads something I've written and says, without me prompting them, that I gave them chills where I wanted the reader to get chills or made them lose track of the world when they read just like I do when I write.

I couldn't NOT write.  I'm an addict.

[Josh]

I write because if I didn't let the words out, they'd scratch up the furniture and piss on the carpets.

Seriously. I'd go crazy. Writing is the one form of work that I truly enjoy, even when it's painful and stressing me out. It's the one thing I can see myself doing for the rest of my life, and I pray to God that is what I'll end up being able to do. I write because writing makes me want to continually expand...expand the places I've travelled to throughout the world, expand what I know about science or mythology, expand the people I know, the foods I've eaten. If I don't, I'm going to be one dull wit sooner or later, because life itself is what becomes the answer to that ubiquitous question: "Where do you get your ideas?"

There's a lot of unadulterated joy in writing...as I'm sure many people with that creative drive have experienced. Am I always happy with my writing? Hah. Plenty of days I look back on a mudslide of words and wonder if there were any bodies buried that I should take the time to dig up. But no matter how much market research or rewriting or critique groups or writing conferences...I always come back to the blank page, and some words pawing at the door to be let out.

www.jrvogt.com

[BobSkull]

Because I love to do it, because it is an escape, and because it's going to be my profession.

[Abstruse]

I write because I have to.

The Abstruse One
Darryl Mott Jr.

[Mack]

I write because my imagination is bursting with stories and ideas that demand to be told.

Also I seem to be addicted to do the stuff that people say I'm good at. So when my 5th grade teacher informed me about how good my writing was, I kept doing it.

[Aethon]

Because I can.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I write so that the voices in my head will shut up long enough to let me sleep and not sneak in elsewhere; because while i can cope with a film review going off into some specific character's take on the interior decoration, it would do me no good at all for the documentation for the programs I write to come out in the mode of an early twentieth-century Dumas translation.

[prime_spirit]

Because no one else in my family approves of me writing fiction. I have no support whatsoever. They especially opposed to contemplating a future of me as a writer. Yeah, I'm a rebel .

[Danielle/Evie]

I can do whatever I want with it! I can include all the random pieces of information I adore, without predjudice!

and I simply love it.

[Drew]

It's great theropy.  It just happens in my head all the time, I might as well jot it down on paper.

[terioncalling]

Because otherwise my brain would have exploded long ago from the sheer swarm of the ideas in my brain.  Dang things multiply like rabbits, I swear...

[Richelle Mead]

I write because characters and stories are always popping into my head.  I could sit and imagine them all day and feel an endorphin like joy.  Getting them out on paper is like the physical manifestation of that...and hopefully it gives others joy too.

[blgarver]

I write because ever since I can remember, I've had the instinct to write.  I've been writing stories since I learned how to write in kindergarten.  Granted, I'm much better now that I was when I was five, but I've been writing my whole life.

I never really made a decision to write, I just always have written.  Just like I've always breathed, blinked, and ate...it's just an inborn desire - no, a need - to create stories.  I'm only truly at ease in my own head if I've written something.

I can't really explain it...I just do it.

[Cathy Clamp]

I discovered I was good at it. No burning muses . . . no desperate need to get the story told. Just a simple "seems a shame to let it go to waste."