I think the subject is self explanatory if a little open ended to interpretation. It’s also not something I think we think about too often as writers as we’re usually too busy writing or plotting or editing. I find it interesting to see how others approach their own writing, their goals with what they write and how they manage it alongside everything else that life demands.
For one thing, it is unlikely I will ever have children and I want to leave some trace of myself behind after I’ve gone. But, this is secondary.
What I think is more important is this…compulsion to express myself and, ideally, to be understood. That’s all. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to pen a few bestsellers so I could help people out financially and maybe retire to an underground fortress w/ shark tank, but the work itself is everything. If I can’t produce art then I may as well not exist.
Because I’ll go mad if I don’t.
Because I enjoy it and feel I have a knack for it, which is pretty much why people do anything, I guess. I like losing myself in writing, I love having written, and I love having my work published and read.
Because the ideas won’t leave me alone until I’ve got them written down.
Because I have to.
This, very much. See Richard Dawkins on genes versus memes.
I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. I guess what I really want is for someone - probably a girl of around 11, like the one I once was - to read something I’ve written and have an idea, or a character, or a sentence, stick in their mind for the rest of their life.
A bit like Lisa Simpson and the Lisa Lionheart doll, if you will 
Because it has always been a dream, and now when I have children, I can tell them I have accomplished my dreams.
This is really close to something I say about writing. I also write in hopes that something I’ve written will reach someone – probably a girl of around 12, like the one I once was – and she won’t feel so alone anymore. It’s less about lasting and more about being there at a time when someone is really needed, but no one is there – except a book.
Same as many have said above, if I don’t write I’ll go crazy. There are ideas that need an outlet and writing is essential as exercise to me. I get depressed and anxious if I go too long without it. Can’t remember when I did it first, creatively, but it was like finding out that you just might have working wings. No other hobby or past time ever made me feel that way.
Pick one:
[ul][li]Since I was perhaps 13 I’ve wanted to have something I wrote sitting on a shelf in a bookstore. It’s a life goal.[/li]
[li]Getting ideas OUT of my head.[/li]
[li]Writing is the only thing I feel I am competent at.[/li]
[li]Putting my money where my mouth is when I see a story and think “I could do this better”.[/li]
[li]Putting out a story that I haven’t seen done yet, because it’s a story I’d like to read.[/li]
[li]Recognition, approval, attention.[/li][/ul]
I always wanted to have a book for sale at the supermarket checkout. I think the new version of that is to have your book for sale at Costco.
I’ve wanted to write for some time, I just didn’t think it was going to be fiction. When I was in my mid-20’s I wanted to write a ‘how to’ book about computers that evolved into ‘I’ll do a how-to website instead’ but neither one ended up happening. Fast-forward to about six years ago, when I joined an artist’s group in San Antonio (First Storm Manga, long since dissolved) which provided the ‘spark’ for me to start writing fiction and I haven’t looked back since.
A ‘book about computers’ did eventually happen (The Rules of Tech Support) but the majority of my output is now fiction. To directly answer the question: I write because it provides me with a creative outlet and I genuinely enjoy writing stories. I particularly like writing arguments…though I’m not sure what that says about me.
Television became too boring, even for me.
Just kidding! I suppose it’s the same reason I do math. If I start out and know the whole thing in advance, it’s not very interesting. I suppose that is the biggest obstacle to getting a novel-length story: the better planned it is, the less I want to go.
I never saw writing as something that I could do, but it really came out to me when I needed something to save me. It gave me a way to ease my mind and feel proud of myself. The feeling of having written something does not compare to anything else as far as excitement and pride. I’m not sure where I would be without writing, but it’s my way of telling myself that I am good at something, I have something to look forward to, and that I have something to keep me busy.
For me, writing was always a way to relax and ‘till the soil of my imagination.’ That is, when writing I could just wrap myself up in my own little world and shut out reality for a while.
“If you can quit, then quit. If you can’t quit, you’re a writer.” -RA Salvatore
I’ve tried to quit before. As supportive as my dad was, no one in my family ever believed any form of a life could be established through being a writer. No one really had any faith in the only thing I believed I was even halfway decent at. It was a much-needed outlet for an over-active imagination and at one point offered the only escape I possibly could obtain in a life that had spiraled obsenely out of control. Yet when everyone whose opinion matters most to you in life says nay and you’re the only one to say yay, it can wear on you like an ocean against the shore. Between that and my perfectionism, holding myself to such high and ridiculous standards, I went so far as to destroy my writing notebook in a fit of frustration and pain.
For me, writing isn’t always fun or entertaining or just something that I do for shiz and giggles. Writing can get excruciating, reaching down into the depths of my being to produce something that can never live up to my standards. It’s an exercise that I had tried to give up time and time again only to come up with more ideas that plague my brain like some sort of virus, refusing to leave until they’re exorcised out. It’s an addiction that I can’t seem to shake, a disease that I can’t cure. It’s a curse that I would not wish upon my worst of enemies. And yet…
Yet the first time I recieved Honorable Mention for a genre I had never once even attempted to write in before, the first time I saw the word ‘author’ next to my name in GoodReads, the first time I saw my words, my ideas, my world in print, on paper, in a book, that people were trading real honest to goodness currency for, the first time a fellow author stepped up and asked me to sign their book… it’s worth it. All the years of pain and frustration and constantly questioning myself was all worth what I’ve experienced over the past year. I’m so glad that this was an addiction I couldn’t give up. I’m so relieved that I never was able to cure this infection. In a world of self publication where fan fics can become #1 best sellers, maybe the word author doesn’t hold near as much weight anymore. In my own little world though, it means everything.
I write because I can’t quit. Now though, I choose to write because there’s not much out there that can beat the natural high those experiences have brought.
This is so true. A year or so after college, I told my husband that I would quit writing if there was someone that I could hand my resignation in to – but there was only me, and I wouldn’t accept it. And that’s far from the only time when I’ve desperately wanted to quit.
You summed up my whole blurb very well! And I love the way you worded that XD
It can be reassuring to know that one is far from the only author to ever try and fail to rage quit writing.
One of my favorite moments in a writing panel was at FC a few years ago, and, I think it was Ryan Campbell said, “Writing is hard, and no one should it.”
My husband and I still say that to each other whenever one of us is struggling with writing something.