Why write?

As I expressed on my other blog, briefly, the writing on Bones impresses me greatly. My husband loathes crime shows and yet he has become well and truly addicted to Bones, initially through my sheer persistence in exposing him to my beloved show. But the true credit for the success of my endeavor belongs to the writers and the creator, Hart Hanson. For greater depth and breadth of explanation on my love for Bones, see here.

Reading Hart's reasons for writing provoked an internal challenge to articulate my own. I don't believe I can be as eloquent as Hart, and I know I am not as funny. I can't match his experience, his years, his wit or even his excellent punctuation. But I shouldn't try. The world has room for all kinds of writers and while I can daydream of being a part of something like Bones (which looks like a blast) I have chosen, at least for now, to focus on something I can do slowly and with whatever measure of deliberation I choose to adopt: fiction writing. More specifically, novel writing.

I am a tried and true observer. I love to sit back and pick apart things from afar. I'm deliberate and I love to mull. I could revisit this in a year, or 10, and while the delivery would assuredly improve I doubt the reasons would change. Hart writes to understand the world. I research to understand and then I write in hopes I can explain it to others.

I write because I want to create something. This desire manifests in many ways for me - photography, working with yarn, quilting, drawing, painting, and more. I feel a primal need to make things and I never make them for me. Point of fact; every blanket I have ever made I've given away. I feel the same about my writing. I cannot rightly claim it to be as altruistic as I seem to be making myself sound but I still do it primarily for the positive effect I can have on others. I write because I want to tell a story. I want to make something in the reader. I want to make the reader happy or sad or angry. I'll even settle for intrigued or bemused, for a time.

It's not art to me. I don't write for the sake of the work. I write for the impact I dare to hope the writing creates in you.