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To learn what I think.
To preserve beautiful moments or images.
To understand.
To discover truths.
To make children laugh inwardly.
To give children somewhere to go.
For the pleasure of arranging words as precisely as musical notes.
To feel as though I'm discovering the story that pre-exists.
To feel I'm receiving communications from something bigger.
To remember.
To go on an adventure.
To make something that reflects my self.
To contribute something positive.
Because when I was eight I was told I did it well.
To make something that goes beyond me.
To make something that lasts after me.
Why do you write?
I would like to start a new segment of the site where I allow authors to answer the simple question “Why do you write?” I recently found a post about the author Mary Gaitskill on Brainpickings. Maria Popova (Brainpickings creator) found this gem in the book WHY I WRITE by Bill Blythe.
To satisfy a basic, fundamental need. I think all people have this need. It’s why children like to draw pictures of houses, animals, and Mom; it’s an affirmation of their presence in the corporeal world. You come into life, and life gives you everything your senses can bear: broad currents of animal feeling running alongside the particularity of thought. Sunlight, stars, colors, smells, sounds. Tender things, sweet, temperate things, harsh, freezing, hot, salty things. All the different expressions on people’s faces and in their voices. For years, everything just pours into you, and all you can do is gurgle or scream until finally one day you can sit up and hold your crayon and draw your picture and thus shout back, Yes! I hear! I see! I feel! This is what it’s like! It’s dynamic creation and pure, delighted receptivity happening on the same field, a great call and response.
Mary provides another reason for why she writes:
To give form to the things we can sense but not see. You walk into the living room where your father is lying on the couch, listening to music. You are small, so he doesn’t hear or see you. His face is reacting to the music, and his expression is soft, abstract, intensely inward. It is also pained. It is an expression that you have never seen. Then he sees you and smiles, but the music still fills the room with that other expression…
Today is the third annual celebration of National Day on Writing. To celebrate, the National Writing Project is hosting the “Why I Write” project.
Follow this link to learn more about all the activities. Writers and readers can participate by submitting essays on Figment.com, watching The New York Times learning center interviews, or reading blog posts at the Edutopia community.
Here’s more from the release: “The ‘Why I Write’ project aims to create a national discussion about the importance of writing by collecting essays from people, interviewing authors, collecting student essays and spreading the word throughout the country as one way to celebrate the National Day on Writing this week. On the National Day on Writing, people will tweet why they write with the hashtag #whyiwrite—with the goal of creating a trending topic on Twitter—and also post their musings about why they write on Facebook.”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
One of my students at my teaching dayjob asked me recently why I needed a day job if I am a ‘real’ author (as opposed, I guess, to being an unreal one). I explained that , like most authors, I need a day job to supplement my income. She was a bit puzzled by this, and went on to ask why I bother with writing if it doesn’t make me enough money.
Although I answered her with several reasons, I’ve
I am not a NYT best-selling writer. While my books have won awards and made lists, when it comes to publishing, I'm "mid-list". Sure, I hope that some day I will "break out" into the big time. There have been plenty of difficult and frustrating moments when I've thought "If I only could be inspired write about vampires/wolves/faeries/paranormal romance" or whatever the publishing phenomenon du jour happens to be. But alas, it doesn't work that way. I write best when I'm writing about a subject that fills me with passion. Maybe it comes from starting my professional writing life as a political op-ed columnist.
I've also been told that I'm hard to "brand" because the subjects of each of my books have been so vastly different. It makes it harder for readers to know what to expect when they pick up a Sarah Darer Littman book - unlike say a reader of Sarah Dessen or Ellen Hopkins.
LIFE, AFTER is my quietest book to date. It was well reviewed (well, except for Kirkus, but my reviews from Kirkus grow progressively worse with each book, so I'm expecting to be prostrate in bed with a chocolate IV drip after I read the one for WANT TO GO PRIVATE?) and was awarded a 2011 Sydney Taylor Honor. But it wasn't picked up by the chains and it hasn't set the world on fire.
Sometimes I get sad and discouraged, because I really love this book and it means a lot to me for so many reasons. But then, on Friday, I got an email from someone who had read it. She'd immigrated to the US with her family about five years ago* and identified so strongly with Dani, the main character in LIFE, AFTER that she thought that Dani's story was really my story, and asked me if I still kept in touch with the characters in the book, and how I dealt with my father. She told me that I was "a courageous woman" for sticking up for Jon with the bully.
It really touched me that anyone would identify with my characters that strongly. I wrote back to her, explaining that I was born in the United States, but having moved to another country and been teased for my accent and using the wrong words for things, I did draw on my personal experiences for Dani. I told her that my son had been badly bullied in middle school, and that I wished there had been a person like Dani who had the courage to stick up for him when other kids were mean to him. And I told her that I know both how it feels to be depressed myself, and how debilitating it is for the entire family to live with someone else who is depressed and angry and refuses to seek treatment. So while LIFE,AFTER is a complete work of fiction, I drew on all of those things to write it.
I also wrote to her: I hope that Dani's courage will always inspire you to stand up for anyone you see being treated unfairly. It's not always easy to do what is right, but it is so, so important. Edmund Burke, a famous British statesman and political theorist said: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." That goes for women, too. (He lived a long time ago, when women weren't as liberated).
I thought I was writing to a teenager. But she wrote back to me today and told me more about herself. She is working at a job she was told by her father was the job that was available to her. But her mother (who I want to celebrate and hug) has been encouraging her and her sisters to study and learn and be independent. So she is studying to get a degree in what she really loves, while working at the job she was told was told was the only option.
She wrote that her mother has told her that "educa
I was asked recently why I only write sad books. I was quite taken aback by this question, because I don’t think of myself as someone who writes sad books. But at the same time I knew where the asker was coming from. After all, this person may have read some of my more lighthearted stories in the past, but most recently she had read both Pearl Verses the World and Toppling, both of which deal
Why do I write? Boy, what an easy topic. I can rip this blog off while watching Court TV and eating a tuna sandwich.
Or so I thought. I had such lofty thoughts about The Muse and such. Yet, there was something vaguely familiar about them. And not familiar in a good way. Like in a plagiaristic kind of way.
Then I realized who was being so philosophical in my head. Peanuts. Charles Schulz's Peanuts. Snoopy who fancies himself a writer (don't we all?). Linus, the thumb-sucking, blanket-dragging philosopher. And of course, Lucy the Critic. I have always been a huge Peanuts fan, but to admit they inspired me to write...well, then I'd also have to admit that I took my blankie with me to college. (Seriously.)
Couldn't I at least claim Eudora Welty as my muse? She lived several blocks from my elementary school and I often saw her around town. I could. . .but it wouldn't be true. However, once I got over my writing pretensions, I found my artistic connection to Charlie Brown and all the rest.
The daily Peanuts strips were among the first things I read as a child. I read the other comic strips too, but I never mused over them for days and weeks the way I did Peanuts. Somewhere around eighth grade (slow muser that I am) I figured out why Snoopy and Lucy and Linus seemed closer to me than most flesh-and-blood people.
The Peanuts gang are small children. Schulz never says how old his characters are, but I assume they were somewhere in the K-2 range. What do kids that age do? Ask questions. Lots and lots of questions. So do the Peanuts characters. Oh sure, there is usually a punchline, but a lot of deep and even religious questions appear before the tree eats Charlie Brown's kite( again), or Snoopy steals Linus's blanket.
When I re-read my third grade journal, I see that I was asking questions, and trying to find my own answers. This sort of soul searching evolved from simple question and answer format to the way I write today. I write to figure things out. (And I could have said that about 250 words ago.)
Mostly, I use my stories and journals to work out the kinks in my own life. For instance, Jimmy's Star began as a journal entry in which I was trying to figure out why something that had happened to me at age eight still enraged me as an adult. Now understand that my original incident doesn't appear at all in Jimmy. But in my journal, I wrote my way through that eight-year-old's rage, and discovered the true name and nature of this emotion.
Yankee Girl began as a not-very-good memoir, and ended up as a catharsis. After I finished that one, I truly felt as if I had toted bags and bags of memories and emotions and thrown them in the Dumpster. Those characters and events are based in reality, so it really was like taking out the mental trash I'd been hauling around for forty plus years.
Why do I write? To figure out life (good luck with that one, MA!) To get rid of my own demons and to honor the beautiful spirits I've had in my life. In every one of my books, I am still trying to help five or seven or eleven-year-old Mary Ann understand why things are. The funny thing is that just as you know Charlie Brown will never get his kite to fly, I see the same questions asked and answered over and over in my work. Charlie and I have had a lot of kites consumed by that kite-eating tree, but we keep trying. Wondering. Hoping. Trying to figure it out.
Posted by Mary Ann Rodman
In honor of NCTE’s National Day on Writing, we Teaching Authors bring you a series of posts about our own reasons for writing.
Why do I write? I often say that I think better with a pen in my hand. Sometimes it acts like an extension of my arm and moves across the paper almost by itself. Thoughts pour out that I wasn't even aware of, as if I’ve turned on a tap that allows words to gush onto the page.
Sometimes my brain gets so overloaded that something has to spill somewhere somehow. Writing makes room for what I take in. My brain organizes the most urgent and/or relevant thoughts in ways I can’t always comprehend, and presto! They land on the page for me to sort through.
Sometimes I find scribbled notes in my own handwriting that I can’t remember writing.
Sometimes I write things that scare me because they are so surprising. I ask myself, Where did that come from? And sometimes what pours out is frightening because it’s so personal and so revealing. But a certain kind of strength comes from opening up and saying to the world, “This is who I am, this is what I believe, this is what I stand for.” I think my sister Peggy coined the phrase we used way back in college to describe that oxymoronic state: “invincible vulnerability.” The term has stuck with me all these years because even though it’s a difficult state to attain, I keep striving to reach it. Staying open requires honesty and attention, and the rewards justify the effort. Writing helps me not only discover what I truly believe but also express my beliefs. It helps me focus, pushes me to stretch beyond what I’ve grown accustomed to, beyond the easy route.
Why do I write? I write to remember and to uncover the truth—not only in stories but also in me. I write to learn and to share what I’ve learned, to collect information, to incorporate opposing viewpoints, to organize my thoughts. And a certain kind of joy—or at least satisfaction—comes from watching seemingly random concepts evolve and coalesce into a logical form.
I write for reasons that seem contradictory but connect in ways that make perfect sense to me. And for me, living a meaningful life means making connections: past to present, here to there, me to you.
Reminders Be sure to explore the NCTE web site!
About the Initiative Tips for WritersNational Gallery of WritingEnter our
Teaching Authors contest!
Tonight (Friday, October 15) at 11 p.m. CST is the deadline to enter to win an autographed copy of Candace Ryan’s new picture book
Animal House. For book giveaway details, read
April Halprin Wayland’s October 8 interview. Good luck!
1 Comments on Invincible Vulnerability, last added: 10/15/2010
"A work of art is good
if it has grown out of necessity."
---Rainer Maria Rilke
I've been thinking about that statement since I read it yesterday morning. Does my writing grow out of necessity? Or I could also ask: is my writing
necessary?
- From Merriam-Webster's online dictionary:
- Main Entry:
- 1nec·es·sary
- Etymology:
- Middle English necessarie, from Latin necessarius, from necesse necessary, probably from ne- not + cedere to withdraw
- Date: 14th century
1 a: of an inevitable nature : inescapable b (1): logically unavoidable (2): that cannot be denied without contradiction c: determined or produced by the previous condition of things d: compulsory2: absolutely needed : required
I think the part of the definition I identify with the most is: "that cannot be denied without contradiction." My writing isn't required or inevitable; but if I avoid or deny it, I find that my life starts to become one big contradiction of everything I value.
"Not + withdraw" is pretty powerful, too. Writing is engagement with the world, even as it is done in solitude.
And you?
Came across this article today:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/04/younger_readers.html
The following comment set me thinking, ‘If you ask most dedicated Young Adult (YA) authors why they write for teenagers, they're likely to tell you it's because they continue to think like adolescents.’ Is this why I write for the children? To some extent is it, but it’s not the whole story.
I write to entertain, myself and others, and teenage characters have a much greater capacity for fun than their adult counterparts. With all the responsibilities that come with adult-hood fun just seems to fall off the radar. Adult books, even if they are have child protagonists, are meant to look at the struggles of life, love, relationships, looking back on the effects of growing up. etc. They are expected to be serious, weighty or follow pre-set formula of a genre. By writing about teenage characters, for a teenage audience, I can escape from all those constraints and just write cross-genre entertaining novels that are fun.
There is another aspect to this, of course, do I have the maturity and ability to write about adult issues? The answer is yes. But why should I? I don’t, at the moment, have the desire to write adult material. I prefer to write about the adventures and heroes that fill my mind, and they are best expressed in the form of teenage protagonists.
J.K.Rowling, of course, has changed the rules with Harry Potter – now the teenagers grow up and face all the angst and issues that Enid Blyton avoided. Can anyone write a series about child characters without them growing up – I suspect not.
A colleague drew my attention to this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/magazine/6582955.stm.
Why write? This is my reply:
Computers, spell-checkers, auto-correct, and editing software have certainly made writing a novel much easier. Thankfully, though, there is still no substitute for talent, and you still need the discipline for the hard day-by-day slog.
I started writing a novel simply because is was a challenge I could undertake with a laptop during the downtime when I commute (two 20 minute slots per day). I had no idea whether I had the staying power to make it even to the end of the first draft. Five re-writes, three years, and a lot of editing later, I am finished. I don’t expect it to find a publisher, but I will try anyway, because that is the next logical step in bringing the characters alive – who knows, it may be just what the publishing industry is craving and I may yet see it in print. I’ve started a second novel with a much better idea of where I’m going, what I’m doing, how to do it, and what the market wants. I reckon this second novel will take me only two years and only three re-writes. This time the first six months will involve a lot more planning than writing.
Why a second novel? I’ve got the bug now. I’ve created one novel so I can legitimately call myself a writer, now I want to get published so I can call myself an author. Besides, what do you do after the first novel, just give up? Let my characters die off? They are great characters, I want them to live in other people’s minds as well as my own, and for that to happen I need to create a novel for them which publishers want to sell.
I drew this while sitting in one of those 5 hour defensive driving courses you need to take to lower your insurance. The teacher was a boring guy so I imagined him as an evil overlord.
Tim
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First to leave a comment! wow ...Anyway caught you on twitter this morning and followed the link. I love your 5 reasons why ... I could read your 'joy' between the lines and for that I thank you as I'm sure so would all your readers.
Thanks for your comment. Glad to share the joy :)