A recent issue of The Writer magazine featured writer Alice Hoffman speaking about how and why she writes. On the subject of reading and writing she says “Writing serves the purpose that reading used to serve for me. I always feel like reading save my life because it was a place for me to escape. I feel like quitting all the time, but the act of writing is like being in an ecstatic state. It’s like being high because you are not there. You’re experiencing something on a different plane.”
I feel what she means about writing, but what exactly do I feel? Making a list is always a good thing to do when this kind of question comes up. Here is my list of eighteen reasons why I write:
- To understand what I’m thinking.
- To revisit places and people of the past via my imagination.
- To entertain myself.
- To feel the magic triangle between ideas, the pen on the page and the written result.
- To dig for buried treasure.
- To reflect on common things.
- To reflect on extraordinary things.
- To approach an understanding of human nature.
- To contemplate death.
- To open a window in my brain.
- To translate experience into understanding.
- To be with others through language.
- To discover my childhood.
- To describe.
- To play with words.
- To find lost worlds.
- To remember
- To forget.
