Why write?

Buried in a book

Good afternoon my friends,

Work has been wild with training recently, and Delta variant cancelled my much-beloved trip to visit my mother for her birthday (first visit since 2019!). I am still reeling and feeling that disappointment and sadness. But, the writing goes on!

Recently I started reading the apparently-famous YA fantasy series, A Court of Thorns and Roses, by Sarah J Maas. I am on book 5, I think, now? It has been a whirlwind of drama, romance, and magic! Imagine if Beauty and the Beasts meets Twilights meets Hunger Games, but not quite any of them. I highly recommend reading this series!

An inspirational tidbit

Without spoilers, I’d like to share something from the 4th book in the series, that inspired me greatly earlier this week.

The main character is feeling sad and experiencing PTSD after traumatic events. She has not been able to do her chosen creative works in a long time. One day, she walks into a weaver’s shop and discovers a gorgeous black tapestry with a silver symbol in the middle.

When she asks about the tapestry, the weaver woman shares that she made the special black thread when she found that her husband died, and she calls it Void. When she succeeded at making the beautiful, glowing, iridescent black thread, she felt happy and hopeful, and created the glowing silver thread. She called it Hope.

Main character asks, how do you keep creating even in the midst of all this grief?

Weaver says, I have to. It’s the only way I can express everything that is churning inside of me.

Why write?

When I read this portion of the book, I had to sit back for a moment and think. I thought about how, I get so caught up in worrying what people will think of my writing. Sometimes it stops me from writing at all, and to this day, I barely share my writing; even friends and family haven’t seen much of it.

Then I thought, well, what have I been feeling, with the trip to my mother’s cancelled, and how can I put that into my current work-in-progress? Where do those feelings fit and match with my main character?

I immediately leapt up from the dining table where I’d been reading, and sat down to write.

It’s easy to get caught up in how to write, how to please your readers, what they want these days, what the trends are, how to publish, how to get an agent, howhowHOW, but what about WHY? I think, I tend to forget that sometimes, and maybe you do, too. In my experience, when I forget the WHY, my writing becomes stilted, and even I am not satisfied with how it turns out. So instead of focusing on HOW, clearly I need to focus on WHY more.

And, the WHY does not have to be some lofty thing such as, “I want to inspire others”, or as I say to myself sometimes, “I want to share my truth, and I know it will resonate with others, and it will help them find their truth.” Sometimes, you just feel stuff, and then you just…write!

I know this may seem obvious to freeflowing writers who don’t suffer from perfectionism (is there such a writer?), but for those of us that do, this simple idea to write our emotions into the story really helps simplify, and for me, quiet all the Inner Editor/Criticizer voices in my head.

I wish you the best in your writing!

Until next time,

Chaitanya