Write is Right

When I was 14, I wrote a short essay titled ‘Why Do I Write?’ and posted it to Tumblr.

Days later, I received a comment from a reader saying that my article reminded them of a piece written by Terry Tempest Williams. Of course, I made a dive for the Googlemobile because I had no clue who that was and couldn’t figure out whether I had just been complimented or insulted. Long story short, Terry Tempest Williams is an author and an activist, and what I had written bore a remarkable similarity to one of her essays, ‘Why I Write’.

Today, I'm still trying to figure out what pulls me to the writing desk. Why do I write?

Words make me float.

They keep me sane.

Words are my sanctuary.

Despite all the passion I feel for writing, I have so many doubts and difficulties as a writer.

How do you heave your soul onto a piece of paper? How do you articulate all those one-second thoughts that drift through your mind with all the ephemerality of a wisp of smoke? How do you accurately capture the sights and sounds in your head with tools as flimsy as a string of words?

These questions have been looming over me for ages, and the frustrating part is that there are no answers. In the end, though, that’s what motivates me to keep on scribbling; I’m not concerned with grammar, or syntax, or pride, or recognition.

I’m just captivated by the search for answers to questions that have no answers.

I’ll top this post off with an excerpt from Terry Tempest Williams’ ‘Why I Write’ because it pretty much embodies how I feel every time I finish a piece of work. I'm embarrassed, guilty, frustrated, happy, thankful, and excited all at once.

“I trust nothing especially myself and slide head first into the familiar abyss of doubt and humiliation and threaten to push the delete button on my way down, or madly erase each line, pick up the paper and rip it into shreds – and then I realize, it doesn’t matter, words are always a gamble, words are splinters from cut glass. I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient.”

Photo Credit: Angela W