Why Write?

Why do writers write? Certainly not for the fun of it. Few writers I know think it's an enjoyable process. It's often such a torturous process that Hemingway declared, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” We dawdle, we procrastinate, we clean the house or mow the lawn -- anything but write. Discipline, though, helps us overcome those obstacles, so that we do not, in fact, go mad. We write, because, in spite of the difficulty, it's a compulsion. We write to keep our sanity. The words, the stories inside us simply must be released. Trust me, you don't want to be around us when we have procrastinated too long and the stories inside are getting impatient to be told. That's when, bleeding or not, we have to sit down with pen and paper, typewriter or computer and tell our stories. That's when we are most sane and at our best.