Why do you write?

I write because it's the only thing I know how to do. I went into journalism, and now I can't stand it. I'm stuck. Now I'm trying to branch away from journalism.

[QUOTE=bmk]I write because it's the only thing I know how to do. I went into journalism, and now I can't stand it. I'm stuck. Now I'm trying to branch away from journalism.[/QUOTE]
Seems everybody that studies journalism hates it, but its a training ground isn't it? Its where Chuck came from.

That's a good way to put it. Count me in on Christina's theory of writing.

[QUOTE=morey]So why do you write? I'm curious as hell.[/QUOTE]
I don't write because I feel compulsive to do so. I don't at all feel that way.
One of the things that I like most about rhetoric is that there are just so many thoughts that go over so well as written words but are hard to convey verbally. I have always had a bit of a speech impediment. It's not so much a stutter anymore, but it is still ever present when I speak. Either in casual conversations with friends or professional at work. This has made me more conscious of words.

So to answer, I write because I can’t tell stories :D & I have so many.

Kabol

Yeah. Plus it is a lovely cop-out. When a naked woman sits up in my bed and lazely looks over to me and says something about, "We don't talk; why don't you want to talk to me?" I'll just laugh to her face and say, "Because, I'm a writer. Now take your money off of the night stand and get outta my house."

This is the sort of thing that helps to make life easier :D

It's all about creative gurgitation...and to entertain. What better joy in the world than to have people read your work and speak about your characters as if they're real.

[QUOTE=morey]Seems everybody that studies journalism hates, but its a training ground isn't it? [/QUOTE]

You're right; it is a training ground. Journalism has taught me how to research and write stories better. It's a sense of creation that really pushes me forward. To create something that I can make live and breathe with the characters involved--real or imagined--makes it all worth it. What I don't like about journalism is the reporter aspect. I don't like most people enough to go out and talk to them. I rather just write their story. It's a bitch of a paradox.

Why do I write?
Why do I read?
Why do I hum?
Why do I like going barefoot out on my balcony in the winter, leaving footsteps in the snow, until my feet freeze and I stop feeling them?
Why do I like hanging out at the big busstop at nights, where only cars keep racing by, where the streetlamps hang like tiny orange moons in the air, where I can dance and sing and no one would hear me?
Why do I sit alone at nights, in front of the blank monitor, melting away in sweet memories?

Because all these are ways to find myself. Not these mindless Find-yourself-and-what-is-your-power-animal psychological tests and exercises.
Because when I write I am alone with myself. I am with the one person I can be completely honest with. With the one person who understands me, and if at times he doesn't, writing helps him.
Because when I write, I imagine this complete stranger reading this and feeling just as I have felt. And that is true comunication.
Because "Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, you just can't take it." So you write it down.
Because there is a unique happiness in being completely alone.
Because in writing I can let everything out, leaving but the true 'me' inside.

Because writing is the best thing that has happened to me.

Ah.. I love this thread...

here is a poem kinda answering the question: [url]http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/fan/workshop/view.php?id=1631[/url]

I write because I must. Just like I gotta eat, I gotta write, or else my head will overflow with ideas and explode.

Like this:

[IMG]http://szilagyi.us/images/exploding_head.jpg[/IMG]

So I'm left alone until I'm ready for a refill. Fuck off, chatty bartender!

I write to work out ideas for drawings.. I'll start with just some idea, which I don't want to forget so I write it down.. then it turns into a spontaneous stream-of-consciousness writing session and when I'm done I have enough ideas for many illustrations. Most however, never become art, because I hate my naïve ideas and I'm a terrible slacker.

[QUOTE=big S]i write because it's the only thing i've ever been passionate about and i've always been the type to sit back and observe things. i've got a million stories i bet. i also write because books seem to be the only thing not tainted by mainstream success (at least, the kind of books i read aren't). books still seem to be pure i think. make sense?[/QUOTE]
You've got a million stories? Boy, I wish I had 5 or so. Really, it's so hard for me to come up with a good plot for a story (or novel). That's why I always just end up writing little vignettes, situational descriptions. I don't know, maybe I just lack life experience.

I write because I'm not pretty enough to be a movie star.

[QUOTE=stoyan]You've got a million stories? Boy, I wish I had 5 or so. Really, it's so hard for me to come up with a good plot for a story (or novel). That's why I always just end up writing little vignettes, situational descriptions. I don't know, maybe I just lack life experience.[/QUOTE]

Man, one of my favorate authors in lit is the homie O'Henry. He never did write books; he wrote -- about -- 300 short stories, and most are no longer that 3 pages. They are very entertaining. I'm not sure if I could make it through a full novel by him, but I could easily trench through books of his different stories (first person, second person, third -- oh my!).

My point is not for me to just be stupid.

the point is that he is an author that I spend a lot of time reading and all the he ever wrote were short stories, and most of them are very short. And they are all written very well.

just a couple cents in the pot.

Kabol

I'm one of those people that doesn't have a TV. Which is hard. The not having a TV bit isn't, but being a person that doesn't have a TV is hard.

I mean, I think about the Western days, where you would grow up like that kid from Unforgiven, with dreams of travelling and fighting off bandits, or whatever. I think about those old western towns, and how when the kids like the kid from Unforgiven seen a Gun Fighter or a Cleric, or some travelling man running through town on a half dead mule. They probably sat down with him, for hours and hours, listening to his stories and everything he had to say.

I'm planning a trip this summer, to walk the Bruce Trail in Ontario. I figure it'll take about two weeks to walk it, that's if I do a good 10 miles a day, or so.
I can just imagine coming back from the trip, and coming home to my brother's apartment. I can picture him and his girlfriend sitting on the couch, watching 'friends' or that sitcom with the kid from Back to the Future.

On my trip, I may see an almost extinct breed of rattlesnake, or a white tailed deer. Maybe even a red deer--which is our family crest. I could run into a coyote that would have run away if only it had seen me before I saw it, too. But it refuses to run now that I know what it would be running from.
I can imagine the kids from the Western towns waiting to here about these things, and I can imagine walking through the door of my brother's apartment, and him saying 'shhh', then waiting for a commercial break to tell me what's happening at central perk with 'Chandler' and his fellow companions.

That's why I write. Just because of the hope that there's still a few kids like the kid from Unforigiven out there, that want to here what people have to say. Both kids and adults, I mean people in general, the 'kid' was just an example, and that's the worst part of this: even my example came from television.

This is kinda cool:

[url]http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/whywrite.html[/url]

That's a little blurb from George Orwell on why he wrote.

[QUOTE=Spike]"I could claim any number of highflown reasons for writing, just as you can explain certain dog behavior as submission to the alpha, or even as a moral choice. But maybe it's that they're dogs, and that's what dogs do."

Amy Hempel[/QUOTE]
Nice one. Although a little pretentious I am tempted to say...

[QUOTE=RandomThought]I don't have a choice.[/QUOTE]

*cracks whip to her back* Hurry up with those those sheets....You call that a greeting card. I've seen better Happy Birthday Greetings from a retard 8 year old!

sorry i did thread from the same subject, my fault.

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um.  this thread is more than four years old.  FOUR years.  most of the members on this thread arent even currently active. 

hello, jinxed. welcome to the cult and the workshop forums.  i dont know you yet but hopefully will in time.

a bit of advice:  this is a cool topic and should definitely be brought up again, nowadays, but next time start a NEW thread for discussion.  people just arent likely to converse in this one.

-kabol

..

 I write because for me, there is no other way to express myself. My head isn't filled with great knowledge but vast imagination. I'm quiet and shy, never telling anyone my deepest thoughts or feelings. So I bury them deep inside my writing hidden inside a story i created. And that makes me happy. I know I need to learn a lot more about writing and other things that coincide with it, my writing is not the best or the way I want it to be, but maybe it will be.