Why do I write? I suppose I’ve never wondered why. I simply write. Forcing myself to reckon with the question of why feels like a game I used to play with my father when I was young. I would ask him “Why…?” questions until he ran out of answers. I feel now the same way he did, and I’m wearing an identically exasperated face. Every potential answer crossing my mind seems cliché. Of course I write to express myself, but that’s the sort of sentiment a thirteen-year-old would write in their diary, thinking to themselves about how witty they are. No one in the history of the written word has ever written something with the intent of expressing nothing at all about themselves. No, my reasons are different. Maybe not unique, but more so than the aforementioned.

 

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Like many of those who write, my infatuation with language was born of reading. As a young child, I couldn’t have put down a book to save my life. My parents, my father especially, are to blame for this. Since before I could speak, he was reading to me. My mother did too, but never as often as him. As I learned to speak, I exercised my ever-growing vocabulary in what I’m sure was the most obnoxious way. I babbled to my poor stay-at-home mother constantly. It felt so good to wield the words I was sucking up off the yellowed pages of my father’s books.

 

 

Entering the school system in a rural, undereducated area was a brutal experience. My classmates in kindergarten were preoccupied with learning basic combinations of letters; I was already reading smoothly. Of course, this led to my being bullied quite frequently. I stopped talking so much, not wanting to draw attention to myself. Still, my love for vocabulary expansion carried on through reading. I wanted more than to absorb, I wanted to create, to utilize the tools I was hoarding. So I wrote.

 

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Of course, this was undisciplined writing. No one bothers to teach children as young as I was how to write eloquently. My undertakings were sloppy and amateurish, but I reveled in the application of letters to paper. I wrote occasionally outside of the classroom, but not often. For the most part, my writing was relegated to the various assignments received from my educators. Although the assignments I received in elementary and high school were not complex, difficult, or rewarding, I found joy in creating them. Each prompt offered an opportunity for me to flex my lexical muscles and arrange bits and pieces of sentences in just the right way. I was writing to fulfill the purpose of an assignment, yes, but I was using the occasion as an opportunity to play with words like Legos. Just as I do now, I was writing papers as testing grounds for the explosive power of words I loved.

 

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In doing so, I learned to love writing because of the joy I found in pieces I produced. Of course looking back on old works is an exercise in withstanding personal embarrassment, but at the time they were completed they were beautiful (if only to me). Dotting the final period at the end of a project felt like lowering a golden capstone onto a shining pyramid. Not only were the words contained within fascinating, but the piece as a whole was a perfectly chiseled block of my own marble.

 

 

My first substantive written endeavor, of which I’m actually still quite fond, was a series of letters spanning the course of a year or so aimed at a woman who utterly refused to acknowledge my existence. I was ever so confident that I could arrange the words on a page in such a way that would elicit a response from her end. I spent countless hours writing, editing, trashing, envelope licking, and stamp placing to coax a response. I never did earn that response, but I spend a lot of time thinking about those letters.

 

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Mulling those letters over led me to the retrospectively quite obvious realization that I was writing in order to command attention. It’s such a natural impulse to write in a way that demands focus that I had not even considered it as a motivating factor for my works. In truth, almost every serious word I had ever penned was designed to thrust myself to the forefront of someone else’s mind. Whether it was a cover letter to be attached to my résumé, an application to a college, a paper for a professor, or even an epistolary serial, I was begging to be recognized.

 

Please, I’m a good worker!

I’ll make a fantastic student!

I’m thoughtful and intelligent, I promise!  

I deserve to be heard!

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Of course, demands are not always answered. I learned this too, in time.

 

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Tallying the reasons behind the strokes of my pen brought about a final revelation. I’m a selfish writer. Whether I was using a page as a lexical laboratory, feeling smug about a particularly pleasant paper, or acquiring attention I was doing it all for me. On the one hand, I feel okay about this. I’m the one who spent (and will continue to spend) years honing my ability to write. On the other hand, I feel as though I’m failing to contribute the the common good in one of my most effective possible methods.

 

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If I’m being honest with you and myself, I am not much good at many things. Writing is my foremost strength. In answering why I do write, I have also uncovered why I should write. My love of wild words, polished projects, and capturing cognizance can take on a meaning beyond my satisfaction. Writing for the sake of my own pleasure is primitive, masturbatory, and superficial. Exactly where I can apply my skills, I am not yet sure. I only know that going forward I shall seek to lend my hard-earned talent to anyone who can use it for good.

I think this compassionate urge existed within me all along, but I had never been inspired to dig deep enough to uncover it.

 

 

It now seems clear to me that the impetus for this feeling is a fond remembrance of the pleasure and creative inspiration I found tucked within the works of others. Whereas I once used the tools of those who came before me for selfish reasons, I have now discovered an intense desire to present those same opportunities to others, just as the authors I loved did for me. Whether I choose to report on human rights violations, write books to inspire courage in those without, or write speeches which help presidents guide a nation through crisis, I will be applying my own talent for the benefit of others. That is the only kind of writing worth anything, I think. The only kind that matters.