Why do we write?

This is a particularly interesting question – one that I’ve always felt myself asking. The more cynical part of my brain feels like the main reason is to escape from reality; maybe in the sense that we prefer the realities we create in our mind as oppose to the one we see reflected in front of ourselves.

This, however, is far too simplistic: it seems to paint all writers as miserable loners who sit in darkened rooms all day listening to The Cure and The Smiths. After all, it does not make sense if this is the only reason – I rationalised that escapism is probably part of why I love writing. The same can be said for millions of others, all of which, I am sure, have realised certain half truths as to their motivations. The fact that we still keep writing despite realising this shows that there needs to be more to our motivations then simple escapism.

Another important point to bear in mind is that this question should not merely be limited to writing – but all creative mediums in general: musicians, artists, actors, directors, and countless others. While there is certain uniqueness to writing in the sense that we actually create characters that exist in our head, all of these creative mediums have something in common: a desire to express something more.

I think the more well rounded reason partly lies with finding meaning in existence. It is something every human being struggles with at some point and the creative medium helps us with this in two ways: firstly, it actually gives us something to do with our time, something we enjoy doing, and, secondly, in other people enjoying what we have done, it creates a sense of achievement, which gives us a desire to keep doing it.

The desire to write is something harder to define – it has obvious similarities with acting in the way in which you inhabit something else: a character. I actually think the writer has the easier job; I create characters but I personally do not feel like I have to fully get within their shoes. The actor, on the other hand, needs to live and breathe that role, however unpleasant and nasty that role might be.

Ultimately, I feel like we can comfortably link the meaning of our existence with our own psychology and interweave that to create a reason as to why we create anything. It is partly about legacy, but that is too general – our life choices are to do with that, not just our artistic aspirations. It is our ability to express that arguably makes us unique and could simply just be a way to define ourselves as human; to put our quest for meaning into an expressive context. It could also just be about acknowledging our own flaws and our own humanity: one joy I get from writing is finding that a specific person relates to a character. This always amazes me; my thought process is always in awe of this. You can relate to something I created. That means that, in some small way, we are similar in a way I could not have known before. It is in this kind of beauty, the beauty of trying to understand each other, that we find the prime reason why we express at all.