Discussion - Why do you write?

You hear the question, 'Why do you do art' a lot, but Rasberry and I were talking this morning about our ideas over a future mafia. Discussing plot ideas and things we liked and disliked about it. I said, 'what i like about writing is...well making shit sound cool, but I enjoy writing about things I wouldnt normally write about or even like,' and to look at it as a writing exercise.

So, why do you write? What challenges you? Where are you going with your writing, if anywhere other than just whismical rantings?

Discuss!

Meegan 19 years ago
This is going to sound odd, I know, but I write because I have to. It is almost not a choice for me. The stories or ideas float around in my head bursting to get out. If I don't write them they haunt me, occaisionally giving me nightmares.

I love to write I have ever since I learned I could put the stories I told my mom down on paper. My mom kept me in steady supply of spiral notebooks and I filled them with my little silly stories. As I grew I turned that energy into papers for school, often loosing marks for being too wordy in my reports and essays. *shrug* go figure.

I hope one day to have the whereeithall to actually finish a story and publish a novel or novella.
Amberelle DeEspionne 19 years ago
It's really interesting.. I aspired to be a writer starting in the 5th grade. It was a passion, my parents were so good about encouraging me and sending me to camps and classes. It was an emotional release for me, an escape and a pleasure. I remember in middle school creative writting class I would be writting 60-70 pages double sided for our short story assignments (I do write big, but still..) The teacher always praised me, and I ate it up. It was like fuel to go further, do more. I even won an award once for a poem I did in class.. That's what I mean by emotional release. That poem was the first time I had even let myself think the word divorce after my parents split up 3 years before.

But something changed when I got into journalism in high school. They literally beat the creativity out of me, you weren't allowed to be flowery and verbose in newspapers I was told. I turned to graphic design then, I was the one working up the layouts and photo cropping and such, by hand mind you! Computers came later =) But by the time I graduated high school I couldn't write. All of my creative outlet was turned to the RPGs I was doing, and writing fell by the side. I tried even, X would try to make me.. it just didn't work for me anymore. I've written more on this board creatively in the last day or so than I have in almost 10 years /sigh

Sorry for the rambling!