My Writing Why

MY WRITING WHY

I've talked about this before on my Authortube channel, and I thought that I would delve into it here as well. For a lot of writers, they have some reason they keep writing, something that drives them forward, that keeps them going on days when they just feel like giving up. They have something that fuels that writer brain when nothing else will, and that's the reason they're writing. It's their writing why.

I will have been published for twenty years in August. I'm 43 and have been writing since I was 19, or at least I've been seriously writing since then. There was a time at 13 when I was writing a lot, but nothing really came of that, and my focus moved elsewhere. In all that time, those twenty-four years, my why has both changed and stayed the same, which is a contradiction and I'll explain.

When I first started seriously writing, I was doing it because I had stories that I had to tell, that's the part that's stayed the same. I know that there are stories in me that no one else can tell. That's not me having a massive ego, but just simply the truth. Other people can take my ideas sure, but they can not tell the story the exact way that I do. That's the beauty of writing, no one's execution is exactly the same.

Through the years though, I've also had other reasons to add to that why. I'm chronically ill and disabled. There have been many times over those twenty years of being an author, that I've not known if I would survive to the next release. That's not me trying to garner sympathy but just being honest here. Sometimes the urge to publish, the drive to finish, that why, is because I don't want to leave things halfway done.

If I'm writing a series at the time, I want to make sure it's finished before and if something goes bad with my health. If I'm in the midst of edits, I want to make sure I get each part of the process done, so that the book can still be published if and when something goes wrong with my health. This is where the contradiction comes into play because my why is both of those. It's the urge to want to tell these stories no one else can, and also the fact that my life is not guaranteed and if I don't finish, no one will.

Your writing why doesn't have to be something major like that, it's just about knowing what works for you, what drives you, how you approach the writing life. At the end of the day, we're all writers trying to tell our stories in the best way possible, and whatever it is that drives you forward, you're doing the best you can, and that's just amazing. So keep going, and keep writing.

Any questions? Lemme know in the comments!

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