Why Write?

     Writing is a bizarre and unexpectedly complicated phenomenon. It is easy to begin, only slightly more elaborate than drawing a square. But writing something good is a process of such difficulty that those known to write well consistently are revered, such as Sage Cotugno, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, George R.R. Martin, and many many more.

And yet again, it is just putting words on paper. So, in both camps, visualizing what writing actually is, is complicated.

Similarly, but paradoxically, a book is often able to be seen as a work of art, but a writer is much harder to see as an artist. The connotations of the words feel distinct, and the act of writing, at least to me, does not seem complicated when you aren’t sitting down to do it.

“Ah, I could certainly write six pages a day, just like Stephen King!” Until you sit down to do so, you write a sentence, you hate the sentence, and you wonder if you had any talent at all, like George R.R. Martin once said.

I consider myself a writer. It is not a hard thing to do, titling yourself, just as you can be a tourist at a moment’s notice. But such a conviction is hard to maintain when you compare your life to others.

As an example, I have written and published forty different short stories. This is something I feel does make me a writer, it is something a writer does. However, I have no novels, and where my writing can be found has been my own little page on blogger for the longest time. Not a collection, not a book, before this one. And yet I did write forty short stories, some of which were good, some of which were great. Some of which have never been read, and some of which fail to say anything at all.

But to compare myself to the likes of Agatha Christie or Terry Pratchett is painfully easy. I know their works, and I wish for myself the kinds of revelations and abilities to connect to readers the way their work has connected to me. And yet I simply do not know how. I am not entirely convinced anyone does.

There are some people who nailed it in one. Harper Lee wrote To Kill A Mockingbird and had practically no need to write anything else as that book became a best-seller which was made into a movie soon after. She did not publish another work for decades, it’s plausible she never wished to publish again.

And then, on the other end of the spectrum, Stephen King reached one of the heights of a writer with The Shining, which he published in 1977, and was adapted into a movie in 1980. And yet, despite this success, instead of calling it good as Harper Lee did, he continued to write sixty-two more books, with the most recent one, Never Flinch, that was released in 2025. And as far as I can tell, he’s made no mention that he’s stopping, so on and on his ability to influence the world continues.

Both Harper Lee and Stephen King are, without question, authors. And yet, what that means is clearly a very different experience for both of them.

Who knows what a writer is? I certainly don’t. I don’t believe they do, either.

In conversation with George R.R. Martin, Stephen King recited an anecdote in which J.K. Rowling came up to him after a flustering conversation with a journalist, and said “They don’t really know what we do, do they?” and his response was “How are they supposed to know what we do, if we don’t know what we do?”

There are also plenty of people on YouTube who are also writers, but the job doesn’t stop there. CGP Grey is an informing and concise non-fiction essay writer who dives headlong into the motives and functions of various systems. Kane Pixels is an abstract horror writer who tells bizarre and alien stories in liminal spaces through his film work. Tom Scott’s series Things You Might Not Have Known is basically the equivalent to a tourism and science blog but taken to the next logical step, a “day-in-the-life” approach.

There are also those who exist in other mediums. In video games, for example, Davey Wreden has created a number of games who’s writing challenges its own genre, such as The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide, alongside one that elegantly questions purpose, Wanderstop. Then there’s the developer Kitty Horrorshow, who’s concise explorations of what I might dub ‘nightmares’ shows beautifully in games like Anatomy, Actias, and her Haunted Cities collections. These two, and more, are also certainly writers, who simply do alternate approaches to storytelling with the medium they write within.

They each have in some element, the writing process, but they then take that one step further into something which feels much more alive. Or maybe that’s me as one born during the age of the internet talking.

But then there’s the caveat that comes with. If I want to be a writer, will anything I do see daylight as media some people consume? Does it have to be a video to be recognized?

Not necessarily. Nothing to popularity is necessary, nothing involved in reach is required.

But, then, what is the value of writing if the next obvious tier of storytelling is a visual like a manga or film? Why publish a book of short stories in a world where there are interactive and visual mediums?

Because one can. And because sometimes the time it takes to process and interpret the written word is the right amount of time to get a point across. Sometimes I can set the scene and then with but a handful of words change it completely.

I can tell you that there is a house. That it is a beautiful cabin that stands strong against the muck that swims by it on a daily basis, that despite the constant earthquakes, the inhabitants find it a cozy place to live.

And then I need no cutaway, I need not wait for you to walk outside, to change its context, by simply saying that this is…

In a mouth.

And suddenly it is somewhere else entirely. It is less work to say more even if it is more work to show more. And, of course, it’s fun and can effortlessly begin the process of communicating the strange and fantastic from me to you.

All this is mostly to say that writing is not a straightforward profession despite being a fairly clear-cut activity.

There are, of course, times where writing becomes like a Van Gogh, unappreciated in its time, or simply ignored altogether. There are times where a work is greatly misunderstood or mistaken. There are times where months or even years of work simply does not pay off.

It is important, for these reasons, to write something you care about and appreciate. Something you’d like to see.

And if you do choose to write, then are you not a writer?

If you choose to dive deep into the page to find what’s next, if you choose to craft the words to make a statistical point, if you choose to let language flow and make concrete a metaphor, are you not a writer?

If you choose to write a short about the writers of the world to push past this month’s writers block, are you not a writer?

It is hard to say. The syndrome of doubt and delay that comes from trying to put oneself out in the world is mapless and treacherous. Some works can catch eyes without being understood, and some can be loved without the author’s hand or agreement.

In the mid 19^th century, Charles Dickins published A Christmas Carol, which gained enormous popularity and is said to have single-handedly revived Christmas, based in compassion and love for one another as apposed to its symbolic origins. However, in America, his book was shamelessly plagiarized and he did not make a dime. So, he instead took to staged readings of the story in a tour all across America, which was immensely popular, and cemented him solidly as the books famed and beloved author, while netting him the financial reward for such a showing.

From time to time, some works cross the paths of you and I, and chance the opportunity to become part of our lives. A video-essayist called Jessie Gender did an impressive comparison of Bethesda’s latest release, Starfield, and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand Of Darkness, and has lead to me buying both that book, and other of Le Guin’s other books, Steering The Craft: A Twenty-First Century Guide To Sailing The Sea Of Story.

Anything made can influence people in fascinating ways. Every cited source in this text is a piece of life that sits with me as I write this, for one reason or another.

All integrated into my heart well before a word of this was inked.

Writing is often said to come from an honest place. I firmly believe this is true, though there are certainly questionable examples.

One of the finer ways this honesty is often discussed is through the lens of theme. In the television show Doctor Who, the episode Heaven Sent is an allegory for grief and loss. But that is not, I feel, how it would be written. I feel it would be written by someone talking in ink about their experience with grief, making that metaphor concrete in the form of the setting and plot of the episode, and putting that lived grief into the Doctor to be expressed.

It is fascinating, as through such a lens, you find conversation on what it means to be human in a show about time travel. Real humanity between those dinosaurs and bowties.

And all of that is writing.

Recently, me and a friend of mine watched the newest film by Makoto Shinkai, Suzume. And now that I’ve put my thoughts to it, I can assuredly say that the film is also about death and loss. Several elements of the film point to themes of death, and from the angle of the writer, that too is a conversation about it. Talking about the idea of death, loss, our place in the world as the living, the unreachable visions of what lies beyond, and so on.

If you have read this collection of stories up until this point and are a little tired of all the morbid themes, forgive me. That said, I hope you can see some of where all my fascination for that topic comes from.

It is not easy to plan stories, but having something to talk about sure gives you somewhere to start, and I think that’s wild.

What’s more, life itself often can be found to have elements like themes and main ideas when described in retrospect. It doesn’t occur with these planned out, of course, but what we remember, what we take away, can be framed as these sorts of ideas one way or another.

With that being the case, what is writing but the purest way to open that conversation?

What is a story if not an earnest chance to look at something bizarre and say you want to talk about it, or talk with it?

 

Terry Pratchett wrote dozens of books for a series of his called Discworld, and one of the most consistent elements of his story is a reoccurring character, Death, who has a void, a personality, and a way of looking at the world. This character has come to be beloved by many across the globe, with Terry Pratchett having been cited as reading letters where people hope that the Death which comes to them one day, is the same who’s come upon his page in cloak on horse with things to say.

I realize many of my examples here have been of the most dramatic of subjects, but this should come as no surprise, since quite literally all of humanity consider this subject, and when it is represented well, it sticks. Hell, in my own life and writing, one of the folks who read Bonfires and Marshmallows regarded it as one of the best I’ve written. If I’m to suppose why this is, it’d probably be because I wrote it honestly about my fears of death, and what I wanted above all things. I have some pretty all-encompassing existential horror about life, and it was one of the ways I went about dealing with my own demons. However, I also have other friends who said it didn’t connect to them at all, and that it made less sense than Memento Cras, which spoke on the same subject from an entirely separate position. And to them, felt significantly more personal.

And I am left to wonder, why do these stories leave such different perspectives?

I don’t know.

What I do know, is that writing honestly is difficult. Writing honestly is like being back in school and wanting to show someone, anyone, this cool thing you made, and knowing full well that if they hate it, you’ll be heartbroken. There’s a lot of love and life that goes into tales that really impact people.

 

JK Rowling is famed the world over for writing the Harry Potter series, which although I won’t deny I loved them myself, have since been shown to be littered with bigotry, judgement, and a dissuasion to any change anything systematically. However, there were times that honest and real ideas about the world came through such writing and left impressions, intended or not. One that has always stuck with me is the door to the Ravenclaw Common Room.

It is a miniscule detail, but from what I remember, the common room doors each had a certain way to be opened.

Gryffindor and Slytherin each had passwords, which I believe changed every week.

Hufflepuff had a set of taps on barrels located in the school’s kitchen.

But Ravenclaw?

Ravenclaw asked a riddle. A puzzle that could be answered by anyone, in any way which fit. As long as you were willing to think and learn, there would be a place for you, like a Library. And given the nature of my identity, and the life I lead, it is no wonder that this sort of thing stuck with me, while all the hate was forgotten and left between the pages.

A fine example of the intended points of the book not quite sticking while something that feels real walked away with me. Or, at least, such is my perspective.

Most stories are like that, in some way. We never get the perfect picture the author wants, and as a writer, it is hard to promise what you say will have and give anything close to what you mean.

And that is completely okay. The act of writing can be a gift to lives unknown and worlds unseen. When I was in school, I read a fantasy series called The Brotherband Chronicles, which were an off-shoot of the Ranger’s Apprentice Series. These books were about a group of huntsmen-like characters called Rangers, and their various adventures. I don’t fully remember the details, it has been almost ten years. I had checked this book out of my school library, and I’d enjoyed it so much I chose to dress up as a ranger for Halloween.

The author, John Flanagan, does not know I exist. But, his books made for a year of some creativity for me, and gave me joy. An amount of success that is intangible to the author, seeing as there’s no trace, save what I write here, which exists anywhere he might find it.

Similarly, every writer I’ve mentioned so far has had an impact on my life which changed this tale to what it is instead of the many other options. And some have helped form how my life will be going forward, or helped to change or reinforce opinions I’ve held along the way.

Hank Green’s book An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, and its sequel, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, both talked about life, being an adult in the 21^st century, the complications of love and friends, the idea of aliens and how we’d react as a species, and more. It connected right to my heart, and I very much cried at the end of the books.

Because, to me, these things are real. Solid. Earnest. I deal with many of these elements on a daily basis. Yes, even the alien one, me and my Dad have very strong, very opposite opinions.

Every word put on the pages of that book is Hank’s, but what I get to take away from that is mine. And that, I think, is one of the reasons writing is so important.

In Ancient Greece, there was a popular philosopher called Socrates. He had much to say about the world, and the game Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey depicts him as quite the insistent interrogator. But he also held an opinion I take to be relevant. He was firmly against the idea that anything he said should be written down, because he saw wisdom as not wisdom because some wise man said it. He viewed wisdom as what you get when you filter the things someone says through your own interpretation of the world, and keep in your heart only what held meaning to you.

Now, I don’t think writing is a troublemaker for this reason, but his point is very well made. There is much about a work you don’t take with you when you read it, and your own internal opinions take court and judge all which enter your eyes and ears, deciding if you agree with it, if you believe it. The same way a fairly discriminatory author can write a profound and frightening mythos, as H.P. Lovecraft did, or a rude and fairly abusive man can excel at introspective and short form writing, as Earnest Hemmingway did. You don’t have to love them as people when their story impacts you. I do not owe J.K. Rowling any support for her outdated and cruel views on identity just because one door to one house meant something more powerful than her dear chosen one, to me. I am allowed to like what I like and take with me what means something to me. In the same way that you, dear reader, may find some of what I say in this paper disagreeable, and yet have found yourself here reading anyway.

There is a concept, when critiquing a work, known as “Death Of The Author”.

It is the idea that the author has no say in what a work means once it is in your hands. And, to some degree, I follow the train of thought. The author cannot decide your takeaway, or the meaning you see. That is your call, and yours alone as the reader. It’s the same way I can say with such authority that Heaven Sent and Suzume are allegories for death. I do not know for sure if they were written to be (though I assume they were), but I know for a fact that’s what I see in them, that’s what I’ve come to understand about them.

Sometimes an author writes a book that a reader will read and will say unto the pages, “This is my life. This didn’t happen to me, but this is about me.”

This, to me, is a fine example of my overall point.

Authors simply take the time to write their own lives with additional impossible wonder, but that connects with people. The way all these peculiar stories with their peculiar writers do.

The impossible way we can talk to everyone at once, honestly.

It is for these examples which I believe it is so important to write if you want to write. That there is no right way, there is only a right audience.

If you get your work in the hands of those who appreciate it, by your own actions or the actions of others, you have succeeded. And that’s all there is to it.

 

- Sarah

(Updated 5/29/2025)

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