Why write?

Fact: The chances of you making any money from writing, let alone establish a career, are slim. This is especially so with the creative arts like screenwriting and TV writing.

The competition is fierce. Writing gigs are limited. Studios, networks, and other purveyors of content are currently caught up in an obsession with pre-branded material — remakes, reboots, prequels, sequels — much to the detriment of original stories.

Which is to say if your primary goal with regard to writing is to make money, you are much better off going to work on Wall Street or some such thing.

Bottom line, it’s hard to make a living as a writer.

Given the long odds against financial success, the obvious question is this: Why write?

Here are my three answers.

Write because it brings you joy to give expression to your creativity.

If you are a person drawn to reading, watching, and telling stories, and you have a strong creative impulse, then it’s probably safe to say when you create something, that experience gives you a sense of personal satisfaction.

Holding an original script or book in hand, something you took from concept to The End, to be able to bring something into existence from nothing but your own imagination, creativity, talent, and perseverance…

You cannot put a price tag on the value of that experience.

So if creating from the seeds of your own inspiration brings you joy… that is a good reason to write.

Write because you love the act of writing.

Some people love having written something, yet loathe the actual writing.

Far more writers, I would guess, actually do love the act of writing.

There is something special about the time we devote to writing. The solitude. The deep immersion into our story universe. Communing with our characters. Seeing their actions and hearing their words. All of it playing out in our mind’s eye.

In some ways, it’s approaches something sacred, transforming however many hours we give to a particular writing session into an almost otherworldly type of experience.

There is nothing else we do which can approximate the unique nature of the very act of writing.

Yes, sometimes it can be incredibly hard to find the words. Writing. Rewriting. Rewriting again. Plot complications which at times seem unsolvable. Characters not responding to our pleas to talk to us. And the endless hours of butt on chair…

Yet we know this is a gift which has been given to us. While there are times we may say we hate it, we grasp that at a deeper, more existential level, we love writing… hands on keyboard or pen on paper, the tactile experience of magic happening in front of our eyes, words appearing on the page.

So if you love the act of writing… that is a good reason to write.

Write because if you don’t, you’ll always regret not having taken the chance.

Giving voice to one’s creativity is always a risk. We can fail. Be rejected. Craft a story which simply does not work.

And yet, there is a greater existential risk if we do not pursue writing. The risk that at some point in our lives, we will be haunted by a soul-crushing question: What might have happened?

You will never know the answer to that… unless you try.

If you have a creative spirit and you feel you have stories to tell, if you do not try your hand at writing, you can be assured of one thing: You will regret it.

There are a lot of sad things that come with human existence, but from an aesthetic perspective, to me there is nothing sadder than someone who goes through their entire lifetime and opts not to attempt to follow their bliss and pursue their creative ambitions. Joseph Campbell summed it up well:

So if you know you’ll always regret not having taken the chance… that is a good reason to write.

There is no guarantee anyone will make money off their writing. But that doesn’t mean there are no good reasons to write.

Write because it brings you joy to give expression to your creativity.
Write because you love the act of writing.
Write because if you don’t, you’ll always regret not having taken the chance.

Those are three good reasons. There are dozens more. How about you? How do you answer the question, Why write?

Special thanks to Patricia Curtin for creating the Joseph Campbell image above.

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