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.

Back in the saddle

I feel new to writing, but, honestly, I'm not. Since that first poem in elementary school about the power of a smile I may have neglected this love from time to time but I never let it die. I won two poetry awards in high school and at the awards a kindly, or blind, old woman thought my Dad was my boyfriend. How many high school guys I have full beards? But I digress...

Until recently I dabbled with fiction but repeatedly wimped out. I once managed to complete a short story but the spot for that gleaming award on my imaginary mantle remains bare. I played with plot lines, but they remained unexplored ideas. A few dared to venture as far as a conceptual sentence or two but such impertinence was quickly handled by those vicious triplets - laziness, apathy, and procrastination. Lets give cousin self-doubt a little credit too.

I really don't know what changed but out of the sure knowledge that sometimes things are better left unknown and simply enjoyed I'll tamp down those questions in favor of more important ones:

-What do you mean there's not a funny fairy? I want some fairy dust on my work, dangit

-Can someone invent, or find, a brain implant to translate my tumbling thoughts and pictures straight into a heart stopping/warming/breaking (take your pick) page-turning literary masterpiece?

-How do I remain a loving & sweet wife when my dear husband interrupts me in the middle of the most brilliant sentence imaginable?

My favorite blogs...

Blogs have been my dirty little habit for some time now and I range far and wide. From the sailor-mouthed infertile, to the David Boreanaz obsession , and again (c'mon, someone make one devoted just to him and I'll love you forever. On second thought...that would quickly turn creepy and wrong) and the gobbling of celebrity drivel.I get around. I read about Lost, a gamer girl playing a creepy male gnome, and everyone else's dirty secrets.

Unsatisfied with even that rapacious bit of consumption I have now decided to jump into the fray myself. I am currently writing a novel. It's my first and I'm sure I will have many stumbles along the way. Come, grab a glass of iced tea and laugh at my expense!