Why Write?

A few decades ago, the French newspaper, Liberacion, asked a number of writers that very question:” Why do you write? Of all the responses, I like Samuel Beckett’s the most. I write, he said, because “I am no good at anything else.” (Not one respondent said, “for the money.”)

Let’s dig deeper. Why write? It is a very modern question. For centuries, the answer was self-evident. You wrote because it was the only way to communicate. If you wanted to learn something, anything, you needed to read about it or hear it. That was it.

Today, of course, we have myriad ways to acquire information: television, radio, podcasts, the Internet, social media. Many of these media involve little or no writing at all. They are visual. We are living in the Age of the Screen. And should you feel the urge to compose actual words and sentences, fear not: AI can do it for you. So, why write?

Today, it is a necessary question, an urgent one, and something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Here are a few reasons why we write.

1. We Write to Think

We don’t write because we have something to say. We write to figure out what we want to say —and what we are thinking. That’s why it is a fatal mistake to wait until your thoughts have crystalized before sitting down at the notebook or keyboard. Start where you are and see where it leads. Writing is thinking…