Why I Write

Why I Write.

‘Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.’ Graham Greene

‘I am a poet, a seeker and a confessor, obligated to truth and sincerity. I have a charge, albeit small and confined: To help others seekers to understand and to cope with the world, if only by assuring them that they are not alone’ Hermann Hesse.

I could call upon the dozens of writers to furnish the answer to why I write, but in truth, the above quotes just about sum it up for me. The first is true of now, the second is what I one day hope for. Even if this dream doesn’t work out, I hold my vocation close to my heart, because this is the meaning behind it, successful or not. 

For me writing is a healing activity, it helps me make sense of the chaos that I find inside of myself, and the chaos I find in the world. It reconciles me to any pain I feel or have felt and restores me with new hope for the future. As my favourite author says:

 ‘It is the fate of some people to experience life mostly as sorrow and pain, not only in theory, in a sort of literary aesthetic pessimism but bodily and actually. These persons, among whom I alas belong, have more talent for experiencing pain than for experiencing pleasure. Breathing and sleeping, eating and digesting, all the simplest functions cause them pain and distress rather than pleasure. Now despite all this, following a law of nature, these people find in themselves an impulse to affirm life, to find pain good, not to surrender, and so they are extraordinarily obsessed with everything that can give them some joy, can cheer them a bit, can make them feel a little happy and warm, and they attribute to all these pleasant things a worth they do not have for the ordinary industrious man.’

And this is why some strange men will forsake career, money, status, relationships and family, just to write books! I do not want to sound narcissistic here, but I know it is also true, that many people of the world, are happy well-adjusted individuals who live prosperous and fulfilling lives, without so much of a glance at the wider suffering of humanity. It is only right that they do so, for they are being true to their hearts, and if people spent too long time regarding the pain of others, then the earth would would cease to spin. Anyway, whether it is hatred of the world or love of the world that dwells in your breast, both are a form of egoism and morbidity and in the end the world will confound you! Aristotle is right: A golden mean set in the middle of extremities is the best approach to any philosophizing.

Nevertheless, it is also true, that many have the bad luck to suffer: Some out loud, some in silence, but either way, their experience counts for something too. How they feel about life is not so much a intellectual choice but an all too real destiny. Orphan Pamuk says: ‘How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known?’ This is true, but I think we all have a duty to at least know the contents of our own minds. To really examine what is going on, is something we can and should do. And when we share it with sincerity, we help others.

There are better men than me who will do more: They will be doctors, social-workers, psychologists, humanitarians, relief-workers and world leaders, but for me I can only give what I have. Emotions are my dowry and thats how I pay my way in this world. My hope is, that one day, someone else, going through a similar experience, perhaps lost in darkness, may take heart from what I’ve written, and so rise to the challenge of life and carry the torch forward. Writing for me is a way to bridge the gaps that keep us apart, literature allows us to see we are not alone, and we are all in this together. 

Yet, Maya Angelo said: There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you,’ And so it is true: Sometimes sharing doesn’t work, and any help you think you can give, isn’t acceptable to the wider public. This is where the other dimension of writing comes in. The personal side. Writing solely for oneself and for one’s own pleasure. All literature, is in some sense a confession, and an explication of that hidden part of the soul that wants to be heard. So it follows, I write, because I want to redeem my own pain, and transform it into something good. Writing as therapy!

Perhaps I am a little sloppy in my craft, because all the novels I have ever wrote, are just refracted versions of myself, only a better version! A hero who starts out with losses, but in the course of the story accumulates riches, begins in despair and ends in exaltation. Freud would call it simply wish-fulfillment: That because I don’t have control over my own life, I compensate by exerting control through writing, and live out my dreams by the quill. In many respects he is right, but it is more than that. For me the task is spiritual. Writing a story is a way to recapture my lost dream of happiness, and my own small prayer to God, even if it goes unanswered. 

I spend hours on it, think about it all day and night, obsess and fret, just to make it perfect; not just in what happens, but in the words, for I want every word to be count. Though it be driven by a kind of compulsion, for me it is something I will always cherish, and always love. A life perfected is a good life, even if it only resides on the page. 

Somewhere along the way, I too developed a knowledge of this so called ‘aesthetic’ and ‘literary pessimism’, and so my works, are distorted! They are filled with chimeras and demons, saints and sinners. I have drawn on Dante, Milton, Dostoevsky and Melville, Levi and Mccarthey. I don’t say this to brag, after all I am a jobbing hack as of yet, I say it only to show that I have masked the true meaning of what I write. But thats the point: So has every other artist, for all this talk about Romanticism, Modernism and Postmodernism, is a deliberate and audacious lie. All writers, no matter how much they dress their work up in literary regality, really write solely to express themselves.

And so in conclusion, it is about helping myself, and helping others. Though every artist is doomed to die, it is the belief and solace of all art and literature, that life is worth living, and we should praise it even in the worst of times. So it follows, I’m not just engaging in a childish fantasy, cobbling out a plot and resolution because I can’t be bothered to do something more worthwhile. To me writing is the most worthwhile thing I can do. I want to bestow all my love and longing, my happiness and sorrow into what I create. I will accept nothing less than the best. Though it is an eccentric cause, it means everything to me. If it doesn’t drive me to madness and insomnia, then it hardly seems worth doing at all. In helping myself, maybe I can help others too. So that is why I write, and why my novel is not yet completed, for I am not just working on a story I am working on a dream.