Why Write?

Every once in awhile we must pose this question to ourselves and answer it. Occasionally someone else, usually a good friend or a concerned parent, will ask it for you--”Why do you write?” I find that, as many times as I’ve answered this question, which is at least every other year, the answer continues to change. At least it looks different on paper. After my inner cry baby finishes with me, “Why the heck do I keep writing anyway because basically the whole world either despises or is indifferent to my subject matter and it’s never going to take off and nobody is ever going to pay me for it either."

But then, that’s not why I write, is it? No, it isn’t.

I write because I want to give some form and substance to my life experience. I want to express what begins as wordless: the spirit, the soul, the heart of the matter. I want to play with language until I get it “right.” I want to barter with others--my words for yours. My poem for your poem. My story for yours. Let’s share what we do, see, hear, taste, touch, smell, feel. Let’s expose a little of what we have hidden, locked away inside a closet until the bones of that skeleton have mildewed, gone moldy. Let’s pick each other’s ribs. I want to add to the Grand Mysteries of Life--Love, Beauty, Tragedy, Truth all the old capital-letter words. Let’s do save the whales, the Earth, resurrect peace and justice from the dead. We’ll dog the establishment and praise the accomplishments of those who work for good--penniless poets, independent documentary makers, teachers, nurses, storytellers, peacemongers, the Mother Theresa’s who never make it to sainthood or even to India.

Let’s use a big vocabulary and be inclusive, diverse and not show prejudice against the words that don’t seem socially acceptable when really we just don’t understand them yet--until we have a chance to mouth them ourselves, roll them around on our tongues, try ‘em out on somebody new and watch the shock as they think, “I can’t believe you said that.” This is what starts conversations..or ends them.. depending on what you’re up to. We’ll trade poems and songs and stories like baseball cards, school lunch items, Halloween candy. I might want what you find tasteless or have grown tired of. Go ahead and show me. We’re writers. We’re all about show and tell:

See this crab claw? It still stinks but I found it on an isolated beach at noon and nothing else was there, the beach was bare--no conchs, no abalone or oyster shell, not even a clam--just this one claw and it made me write about how we go around grasping for things, clawing our way through a tide of plenty, wanting more, more until nothing is left but a disembodied claw that clutches and grabs at nothing--it’s involuntary. There’s not even a greedy mouth left to feed. We simply don’t know how to stop.

And if it ain’t show ‘n’ tell, it’s “What I Did on my Summer Vacation.” How as a teen I discovered who I was completely by accident when another campfire girl lost her marshmallow in the fire and I put a perfectly toasted one from my stick in her mouth with my fingers sticking to her lips and she licked the white stuff off and laughed a big gooey marshmallow laugh which stuck to my soul and somehow my sex and I couldn’t get it off no matter how I scrubbed later in the shower and of course that’s when she came in and stood in the stall right next to me and slid the slippery soap into my wet hand, then offered to help me wash my back and that’s how it all began--what about you?

Oh, yeah, this is why I write and I want to remember this for the next rejection letter, the next offhand remark when a friend “forgets” this is what I do for a living, for my life; when somebody new says, “Yeah, but where do you work?” I want to remember and not ever forget but I still need these words to remind me.

So, tell me, why do you write?