Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

I’ve been writing for a living my entire working life. I did a brief stint waiting tables (something I think everyone should do at some point in their life, for all the lessons you will learn about time management, food, the treatment of service people, and how to charm your way to better tips) but other than that, all I’ve ever done is write. I feel unbelievably, wildly lucky to have had that be the case, of course — what could be better than to get to do the thing you want to do from the get-go? But it’s also given me little opportunity to pause and think about why I do it, and whether I should do it, and what it means in an existential way, since I’ve been running full-steam, writing and writing and writing, since I first started supporting myself. So now and again, I force myself to take that pause and just consider what it is that I do and why I do it. I think it’s a valuable exercise for anyone who writes.

So why do I write? Start with the basics. I love making sentences that do what I want them to do. I love the carpentry of it, the cobbling together of words, the sturdy little outcomes of lining them up in a satisfying way. It’s easy to forget how important this is—just the enjoyment of making sentences—and how pleasing it can be (when it’s going well). Just reminding myself of that baseline pleasure helps remind me of the pure joy of writing. That’s useful when all of the more exasperating stuff crowds in (the sentence that just won’t work, the source who won’t call you back, the deadline that is causing you to panic, the editor who nitpicks). Nothing can interfere with the sheer enjoyment of nailing a series of words in place that feel just right. Remember that, especially when you’re feeling low.

Why else do I write? Well, I like telling people things. I like it very, very much. I have a bit of a missionary’s zeal when it comes to passing along a story. I can savor things in private, of course, but I really get excited when I have the chance to share a tale. I do it all the time at dinner parties (please forgive me if you’ve been at a dinner party with me and I couldn’t stop talking). I just love regaling people with funny anecdotes and interesting observations. Writing feels like a natural extension of that, or rather, a way to do that same storytelling to a bigger dinner party, namely, the world of readers. This urge dovetails with another critical part of why I write, which is that I like learning things. I am the most willing student in the world. The less I know about something, the more excited I am about learning it, and then, in turn, the more excited I am about telling other people about what I’ve learned.

I write because I think it’s important. That’s a broad statement, since there are a million different kinds of writing, but I think it applies to all of them. Writing in all its forms is the essence of human interaction. (It’s interesting how the Internet, which we all believed would be the end of writing, has actually made us all write all the time. If we’re not tweeting, we’re texting, or we’re posting on Medium, or…). I’m reminded all the time that being able to communicate through writing is absolute magic, and to do that for a living is a miracle.

Why is it important to think this through? What’s the value of wondering why you write? Everyone benefits from stepping back and considering what and why they do what they do, for sure. But I believe it’s particularly helpful for writers. In truth, writing is hard. It can be discouraging, exhausting, frustrating, depleting. It is easy to forget why it’s so compelling; why it’s so satisfying; why it’s so important; why and how it can feel really good. Taking a moment to do that every once in a while reboots that part of you that should write with passion and excitement and a sense of delight. You should write with a burning desire to do it. That’s when you’ll do your best work. You should write with urgency, with the feeling that you just must do it. Readers can sense that, just as they can sense when someone is merely shuffling words around, without feeling fired up about it. I tend to picture myself tugging on the reader’s shirtsleeve, saying YOU JUST HAVE TO HEAR THIS! I like imagining myself bubbling over with my story, as if I simply can’t contain it; I must share it or else. When I can lock into that emotion while I’m working, I can answer the question of why I write very simply. I write because I must. And that’s a great feeling.