Why Bother Writing?

Given all the other things you could be doing, why would you ever bother to sit down and write? I mean, after all, you live in a digital age. The written word, you’re told, is falling out of fashion. It’s the age of multi-media, baby. Audio and video. Text is just an afterthought.

Pretty soon everyone will be wearing virtual reality helmets and won’t even have to talk to one another. You could spend your days among the beautiful people, computer generated of course, and join them in magnificent adventures you could never find while sitting at a desk with a pen in your hand or a keyboard beneath your fingertips.

Isn’t it obvious? If you decide to write, you could be wasting your time. No one reads anymore. Haven’t you heard? They don’t have time. They’re all online. Sure, you could write for the web, just as I’m now doing, but no one here really reads either. They scan and they skim, but they don’t read. You’ll be lucky if they finish reading one of your headings, let alone one of your paragraphs.

So, you might ask, what the hell are we writing for? Well, if you’re anything like me, you’re writing because you have to, because you need to, and yes, just because you want to.

Writing’s a thing I tried to put away. I thought I needed to be practical, responsible, and respectable and I decided writing was none of those things, but the itch wouldn’t go away. I don’t know whether or not I’m a writer. I may just be a guy who happens to write now and then, but I know it’s something I have to do to feel whole.

John Dufresne says it best in his lovely book, The Lie that Tells the Truth. Dufresne writes, “Wanting to write but not writing means, of course, that you’re not writing. And wanting to write but not writing will lead to frustration, guilt, and regret. And regret eats the soul.” The only thing I can add to that is, “Amen.”

So, maybe you write simply because you must. You bother because you’re the only one who will ever bother to tell your story. You bother because you just might be the only one to tell a story that someone needs to hear in the only voice he or she can listen to.

And besides, people still read. They may read less often and in fewer numbers, but they read. I know people who can count on their hands the number of novels they’ve read, but they still talk about those novels. Maybe your novel will be the one they list as they touch their third left finger.

Maybe your screenplay will be the one movie they see this year with their spouse (or secret lover). Maybe your play will be the thing they see when they finally, after years of saving, take that dream vacation to New York City and see a real, live, Broadway production, the one they drive their friends crazy talking about. Maybe your tiny little article will be the thing that inspires them to pursue, at long last, their life’s desire. Or, maybe your journal will be the one thing YOU can read in order to make sense of where you’ve been and where you’re going in your life.

Maybe you write because you have to know. You have to know what you think, what you want, who you are, and what you’re capable of creating, and writing helps you discover all these things.

So, put away that virtual reality helmet, take up your pen, and write. I promise you it’s worth the bother.