Why Do I Write?

Didn't make a post last week, sorry. I had been working on this post for a while, and it just didn't come together in time. 

Anyways, this is the sequel to the post I made about George Orwell a few weeks back. Enjoy. 

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The one issue I have with questioning why I write is I feel almost too young to answer. 

If I were to track my development as a writer, I would reproduce a similar path to authors who discovered the magic of language while in school. The only significant difference is my parents decided that homeschooling was the best education for me and my siblings. In first grade we had memory / literacy exercises that consisted of hearing bible stories and then retelling them, with the goal being (I suppose) to improve memory, attention spans, diction and handwriting. But in these exercises I always found myself adding small creative sparks whenever the story I had heard didn’t seem complete. After all, Genesis doesn’t explain how long it took Noah to herd animals onto the ark, and Daniel needed to do something while he was in the lion’s den. These lacking details seemed grievous oversights to my young mind, and I filled in the gaps rather gleefully. 

My Mother swears these incidents are where she knew that I would end up a writer, and I can’t disagree. After all, this is where I first encountered storytelling on a personal level. These exercises inducted me into the grand tradition of oral storytelling at a very amateur level. Rather fitting as the books of the bible were no doubt handed down through oral tradition before being formally written. 

In the following years I enjoyed reading and creative writing exercises much more than factual writing. I never really liked writing essays or researching papers, at least not until later in high school when I began to feel the euphoria of completing a paper for its own sake, not just for the temporary high of completing an assignment. I was genuinely surprised when that euphoria stuck around as I entered college, and several long research papers I finished added to that high. In time I chose Journalism as a major as it forced me to write on a regular basis and still maintain a creative verve to my writing. 

That brings me, more or less, to the modern day. At this stage in my career I haven’t produced much, a handful of essays, a few short stories worth a damn and two novels no one will ever read. But, the pull of storytelling still looms large, and I still call myself a writer. 

So much for my development into a writer. I still have yet to answer the question “Why do I write?” 

In sitting down to throw some ideas together for this essay, I wondered exactly how common the impulse to be a writer is. I would think that most people have had the desire to capture something they’ve lived through, be that the emotions after a brilliant sunset, or a funny conversation between friends, or to throw ideas wildly together in hopes of producing 350 pages of text. And then I wonder, if most people have had those impulses but don’t act on them, how many have felt the call of the pen and been compelled to try again and again? 

Being a writer isn’t about putting words together into rough shape and calling it a day, after all. It’s about getting the right words in the right order, which requires scrupulous drafting and redrafting and then coming back for seconds, thirds and fourths. For those who haven’t had the call, that sounds either psychotic, masochistic, or plain old difficult. 

And yet, you don’t need me to point out the thousands of people the world over, the millions of people through history, and the billions of books, scripts, essays, pamphlets, comics and games that these lucky few million have produced. They can’t all be masochists. 

Ask yourself right now why you do anything, and you’ll probably come up with a variety of good reasons for your actions. But I would wager you might struggle to find a single satisfactory motivation for why you do what you do. For instance, George Orwell outlined four primary motivations for writers in his essay “Why I Write1”; the Egotistical impulse, the Aesthetic impulse, the Historical impulse and the Political impulse. When I ask myself “Why do I write?” I can think of a few more responses: (Being of a fanciful bent, I’ve applied George Orwell’s four motivations to each of my responses in parentheticals.)

• I don’t know what else to do with myself (Ego / Historical)
• Because I want to see my name in print (Ego)
• I wouldn’t be happy doing anything else  (Ego / Historical)
• I see it as a form of meditation or prayer (Aesthetic / Historical)
• It’s my only form of control over an uncaring and chaotic world, and I want to effect change on that world. (Political)
• For the sheer, unadulterated pleasure I take in the magic of creation (Ego / Aesthetic)
• Because I am lonely (Ego)
• Because it’s what I believe I should do (Ego)
• Because I love language and want to explore it’s possibilities (Aesthetic)
• Because I am fanciful and want others to share in my delusions (Ego / Historical)
• Because I am a hopeless romantic and want others to share in my joy (Ego / Aesthetic)
• Because I am neither theologian nor scientist (Aesthetic / Historical / Political)
• Because the written word is intrinsic to my nature (Aesthetic)
• Because I resent the crass simulacrum of creativity which are being pushed by creatively-bankrupt, profit-driven, emotionally-stunted automata through large language models (Aesthetic / Historical / Political)
• Fictions excite me, and I want to find the truth inside of fiction (Aesthetic / Historical / Political)
• Because there is truth and validity to my perspective on the universe we all share, and I must express that truth or perish.  (Aesthetic / Historical / Political)

Decent responses, perhaps, but you’ll note precious few good reasons and hardly anything you’d call an intrinsic motivation, save perhaps the penultimate response.

Perhaps a reason is all I need, but something in me rebels at that idea. I feel the call of writing like a primal, bodily urge, surely no reason is sufficient to explain that... 

I am struck with an incongruity in Orwell’s analysis. Logical and clear as it is, he appears to take his role as a writer as a given, declaring from his first paragraph, “From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer.” And yet, when he addresses his motives, he never really asks why he knew he should be a writer, merely relating his development as a writer from child to adult as if it were innate to him. Perhaps it was. 

I have the same fault; from this essay you could take it as read that I knew I would be a writer merely for inventing details while retelling Bible stories. That is obviously insufficient, and I know my innate desires pull me specifically to storytelling. I could tell stories in any number of art forms - photography, filmmaking, sculpting or architecture - but I am not compelled to any of these as strongly as I am to writing. So, I must ask myself again, why am I a writer? 

Let’s ask something else first. What is writing? 

Is it a functional exercise of language? The necessary action of thoughtful communication? Is it a form of self-reflection? The creation of identity? The exercise of will upon consciousness? The recording of human experience and emotion? Is it sensory seduction and instruction? Is it literal magic, as some authors have suggested? Is it the alchemical breakdown of reality, parsing what we see until we can understand, describe and use that to create something new? 

Yes. Yes to all of the above. 

What, then, is a writer? I feel that answer is somewhat simpler. A writer is someone who sits their ass at a desk and strings words together to purposefully engage with reality. It is insanity, and only sufficient motivation for this insanity is pure love of the craft. 

Quite simply, I love writing, and if that sounds insufficient, well, I just don’t have a better response. Does that make me insane? Maybe. Does that make me a masochist? God only knows. All I know is I have plenty of reasons to tell stories, but for a reason I don’t yet know, I love language, and I love writing. I don’t think there needs to be a deeper reason than that. 

And if there does… I guess I’ll have to keep writing to figure it out.

Sources: 

Orwell, George. “Why I Write.” The Orwell Foundation, Gangrel, 1946, www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/. Accessed 20 June 2026