On Why We Write…
When I speak at writer’s conferences, the most common question I get (besides “how do you get published/get an agent/get to be the person speaking at this writer’s conference”) is “how did you know you wanted to be a writer?”
A hard one. It’s a little bit like asking “How did you know she was the one?” The simple, unhelpful answer is “I just knew.” I don’t get hired to be unhelpful so I usually answer with some long ramble of “Well I was working in Hollywood, then in museums and well, spend a lot of time in bookstores and eh, did I ever tell you about the 900th time I read Stuart Little?”
The real answer is this “I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Everytime I tried to come up with a different job, my excuse was the same. ‘But then I wouldn’t get to write.'”
We write because we must, because not doing it is like throwing a tarp over the sun. Until I heard this quote from Iris Murdoch on The Writer’s Almanac, I didn’t have the words to explain it. And now I do.
“Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one’s luck.”
I’m commiting this to memory. And repeating it a ton.