Why do you write? Do you write solely for pleasure, to enjoy seeing something in your mind committed to text? Do you share these writings with others, or keep them to yourself? Do you write to fulfill a goal? For "historical" purposes so you don't forget something that has happened? As a memorial to someone or something lost? Do you write to influence someone even if that someone is yourself? Letters to the editor, how to texts, writing for a cause? Do you write in hopes of being published? Is your goal to see your words everywhere, so you can walk in a bookstore and smile, knowing that author is you? I've been writing steadily since childhood. After I graduated high school and moved on to college, I ran into a serious dry spot and pretty much stopped writing entirely. I felt the loss, though I wasn't entirely sure what caused the void. Only within the last ten years or so have I started writing again. At first, it was writing for myself, to get back into it and try to put the words back down so they were no longer merely jumbled thoughts. And I liked it. A few years after, I was dragged kicking and screaming into a magazine project. My writing became work. I had a few pieces published and my creativity was the property of the editor. I felt obligated to write, on subjects I wasn't entirely enamoured with. It was no longer fun, it was a job, and despite my wanting to write, I soon stopped doing anything but that project. Disillusionment came quickly, and I walked away from the project. Walking away meant that a collaborator and I finally finished a book we'd been working on. It was never even submitted anywhere, we just enjoyed it. Since then, we've turned out thousands of pages of work, simply because we enjoyed doing it. Only one particular story is available to the public as we narrowed our focus and stopped work on several other pieces that just weren't going anywhere. Much of the current story shows up in my Poser gallery, the characters there firmly established and sometimes seeming to have minds of their own. And it's fun again. So. Why do YOU write?

Well, Crypto, you may have asked the best question in the forum (welcome, BTW). OK, I'll come clean. Several reason: (1) If in a discussion/argument, I try to enhance my argument with my vocabulary. Should my position be weak, then any polysylabic word might divert the attention from my argument...hehe. (2) I want praise. So, I choose ANYTHING I think I am worth a shit at. Since hardly anyone plays chess, I have little means at my disposal to gain those good feelings. So, I comprimise (sp?) by doing what I have half a chance in succeeding...art and verbage. Sad to say, I fail to impress anyone in either. (3) In this venue...it gives me friends. Friends to exhange ideas with and friends whose ideas are imaginative and interesting. Different POVs, etc. That's my confession in a nutshell. I don't intend to ever write seriously. I just want to write well enough so that whenever I want to express an opinion, I can at least articulate it in a way that I don't have to feel embarrassed about. There! Sew me back up...I've laid too much on the table for view.

(1) One of my characters had an argument with another. Her comment was: "Great, I get upset, I swear. You get upset, and you use big words. Yeah, we're really getting somewhere now." Not. I've got a habit of extreme verbosity when I get on a roll, and sometimes, you're right. Throw out a few big words and they usually back down. :) (2) Ouch. Now that's too familiar. My health is in the toilet, I can barely walk, and I feel both helpless and useless. I try to counter that with meager attempts at art and stories, just so I can feel like I've done something right and well for a change. I got thrown to the wolves over an image I posted yesterday, and I yanked it from the gallery. Ouch. (3) Network, baby, network. My partner was gone for a year and a half (Navy JAG, yeah, I know how to pick someone with time to spare, huh?), and most of my work lost something in the process. We think inside each other's heads, finish the other's sentences, and sometimes when we're writing, rough drafts don't show half of what is really going on because most of the time, we KNOW what is happening, and so don't need to initially waste space with it. Without him and that chemistry, my writing showed it. It always seems easier when you have someone to bounce a concept at. And though sometimes the response is harsh, it usually results in progress and a refining of skills. I discovered that thought sometimes working alone can be satisfying, it's a lot easier to work with another person. Gimme a keyboard, and I'll converse, and do it well and usually come off as relatively intelligent. But the connection from brain to mouth short circuits, and I stutter and stammer and can't even complete a thought. Just don't ever ask me to talk.

That's an excellent question Cryptopooka. Chuck's right - it's probably the best question yet asked. I've been asking myself that question a lot lately.

Do I like the idea of being a writer or do I want to write?
Is it my ego that needs recognition or my 'spirit' or something that yearns for some connection with another?

I think it's both.
Chuck hit it on the nail with wanting praise.

Here's a quote that hit me hard "I am greedy, selfish and jealous and I try desparately to be loved by all. I am thinking day and night of how to make myself so important that it will force people to think only good about me. I am sorry but it's true that I always want to be in the right.........whatever I say, I say for two reasons:(1)To create sympathy for myself (2)to show how important I am" (author's declaration in 1st chapter) the great playwright Lajos Egri from 'The Art of Creative Writing' Citadel Press 1965.

I think we could also ask ourselves why do we pursue graphic arts? Or any art.

I am beginning to think it's both ego and 'spirit', but I also think that art forces the artist to suffer and grow in some way so it may also lead to experience: subconciously we are led to acquire experience in order to grow.

Damn, I got a little deep there.

Maybe it's just fantasizing about being someone else(your character)and being in control of what happens.

Ramnimus, you said it for me. Wanting to be someone else. In some ways I've had a pleasent enough life, but also a very boring one. I lack the courage for adventures, lack the appeal for romances, lack the abiity and intelligence for discoveries and inventions. Writing allows me be what I never was and will never be. They are the waking dreams, the unfulfilled yearnings, the ungranted wishes. I can have the daring adventure without taking a risk, have the love that will never be attracted to me, have the illusion of being somewhat smarter than another paper person I created to be dumber than I am (poor thing, I apologize to you, my sad creation). I can be taken away from what is just an ordinary existence to a place that is more intense, more colorful, more exciting. And in that place I turn from the nearly invisible nobody that I am into someone that my fictional people actualy have an interest in (because they have no choice). It's a very selfish (and probably pathetic) thing but there it is.

Alot of the time I write to express emotions that I can't talk about. I have trouble talking about my feelings and problems so writing gets things off my chest.I would like to write to express ideas and share things that I have learned about life but that hasn't happened yet. I think I'm too busy living at the moment to have time to write about it. Though I do take notes for future projects.

I write to be someone else and to be somewhere else. I want to explore the impossible and meet people that can not be. I write to create something that I might someday share with others. I have stories that need to see the light of day. I want to inspire others, touch their lives the same way some authors have touched me. This thread is both interesting and cathartic. Thanks!