Because I must.
I’ve gotten this question many times, either during a presentation or as an ice breaker at a writers’ group, and that is the simplest answer I can give. After being handed the silence rhetoric as the youngest of four children and bullied into a quiet corner by school children without a clue of how to be a proper human being, writing has and continues to be my go-to for expressing what I really want to say, what I want people to hear.
I’ve written long letters to mean neighbors, accomplished publishers, religious leaders, government workers, and parents. Whoever acted as if their speaking words meant more than the ones coming from my lips, I sat down and crafted a document which possessed all the passion I could muster. Amazing things happen when I write.
Although I write poems and fiction stories, they convey ideas in a much better fashion than me droning on about this or that. Action attracts attention. And I’m getting better at depicting movement in my writing. Imagine the happiness I felt when Chicken Soup for the Soul accepted two of my stories and published one of them in I’m Speaking Now on June 1st.
In fact, the very act of writing disperses the stress of the day, the week, the month, and even the year. How could I stop doing the very thing that adds health to my bones?
I write because I must.
Why do you write?
