"He must have been a baker," a writer told me many years ago. To this day, I still identify with those words. All of us who are writers, or aspire to be, have ever wondered why we write, what motivates us to spend hours, and hours locked in a room, writing a story for which we feel both love and hate. And it is that, to carry out that story that howls from the depths of our mind, we must suffer innumerable deprivations.
Doing something, in a sense, implies not doing something else. Our time is limited. Being a writer is like hitting the blind on a plain at night: no one guarantees that you are doing your job correctly, much less that you will be able to live off it. So that, Why do we write? Who knows. Maybe because we are masochists. Of course, I do not guarantee to answer this question, but it does give you some thought.
That demon called "literature"
«All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there is a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible and exhausting struggle, like a long and painful illness. You should never undertake that task if you are not driven by some demon that you cannot resist and understand. As far as you know, that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby whine for attention. "
George Orwell, "Why I Write."
We write because we have something to say, something that we cannot keep inside of us, that struggles to make its way. You don't choose to be a writer, it is writing that chooses you. As much as you want to run away from it, as much as you long for a normal job, a normal life, and normal problems.
Without a doubt, there is always the option of being a sensible and logical person. In other words, and from the point of view of the aspiring writer, gray and empty. Because anyone who dreams of dedicating himself to the trade knows, despite trying to deceive himself, that that kind of life, with which others are happy, is not made for him.
Will to power
«—What I don't understand, Stevie, "she said," is that you write this crap. You write well. Why are you wasting your powers?
Miss Hisler had made a joint out of a copy of VIB # 1, and was shaking it in such a way that it looked like she had folded a newspaper and was scolding the dog for pissing on the rug. I was expecting an answer (the question, said in its defense, was not entirely rhetorical), but I did not know what to say. He was ashamed. Since then I have spent many years (I think too many) being ashamed of what I wrote. It seems to me that until I was forty I did not understand that almost all the writers of novels, short stories or poetry of whom even a line has been published have suffered some accusation or another of wasting the talent that God has given them. When one person writes (and I suppose that when he paints, dances, sculpts or sings), there is always another who wants to instill a bad conscience. It does not matter. And let it be known that I do not pontificate. I only pretend to give my vision of things. "
Stephen King, "As I Write."
The writer has an obsessive, transgressive, suicidal and, I would even say, exhibitionist personality. You want not only to be read, but also to be recognized. He wishes that all those who said that he could not do this, or that what he writes is not "real literature", swallow his words. In its guts lies a latent revenge, almost toxic and even childish.
From my point of view, writers are adults who refuse to give up their childhood dreams. They pursue fantasies and chimeras, with the commendable (or perhaps unreasonable) conviction that one day they will be able to catch them in their hands. Although nobody cares. Although no one understands it.
Ultimately, Why do we write? Because we can't help it. Because it is what gives meaning to our existence To understand ourselves. To exorcise demons from the past. To create something beautiful in a horrendous world. The answers are innumerable, and they are all true, and at the same time a lie.
The only certainty is that the path of the writer is uncertain.