As authors, we are often asked, “When did you first start writing?”
Or “Why do you write?”
The typical answer that most authors give, myself included, is some sort of anecdote about a deep-rooted love of writing or a long-held passion for story telling that we have possessed since a very young age, and while this is in fact true, it doesn’t seem to get to the heart of the matter.
We do enjoy telling stories, of course. Taking a passionate life event or a spectacular action sequence and committing it to the page in an effective and compelling manner is the great challenge of the writer. The goal is to communicate to the reader. Trying to accomplish this in a way that is captivating is what all writers seek. But the question still remains—Why do we write?
The fact that we as writers enjoy storytelling doesn’t necessarily shed light on why we write at all in the first place. In my estimation, there seems to be something much more fundamental to the human experience that compels us to write. Continue reading
