Why write?

Honestly, it can be troublesome. Writers are a misunderstood lot. People expect that it’s easy. All you do it type words onto a screen. As long as you understand the basic rules of grammar, you should be set.

Ah, but it is not quite that simple. One may write without being a writer. Written communication is essential to the world in which we live, but how often do you read something that lacks the basic essence of writing: clarity, energy, vitality, and ease of understanding?

Writers understand the essence and passion behind the words. Words are only symbols for the deeper meaning embedded in them. A writer can take letters—numerous, seemingly random strings of them—and craft them into something that hits the core of who we are as human beings.

I don’t profess to be a writer, at least not yet. I’m working toward it. The most poignant example I’ve come across lately is a personal one. In writing my book Surviving Eden, I found a poem by Emily Dickinson that, in eight lines, captures the entire essence of what took me about 300 pages to express.

Eden is that old-fashioned House
We dwell in every day,
Without suspecting our abode
Until we drive away.
How fair, on looking back, the Day
We sauntered from the door,
Unconscious our returning
Discover it no more.

She is a writer; I am only her apprentice.

So why write? As they say, there are only eight or so plots in the world; everything else is just repetition of the same. Essentially, there is nothing inherently new that we can write. But does that really matter?

I write because my life would be empty without it. I wouldn’t be me. Neither would I understand who I am as a person. When I write, I discover essential qualities about myself and my life. I can put things in the proper context instead of wandering around guessing at what they may mean.

I write to share a part of me with others and to make a piece—even a minuscule one—of humanity better.

Those are just some of the reasons I write. What are yours?