Why Write

You will often hear people speak about writing as life. That like all art, to be done well, writing must be committed to. This commitment is no ordinary commitment. Like a muse or a wife, writing is something you return to whether you like it or not, irrespective of season or pain. You invoke this dull, often morbid exercise, as the defining feature of your self. 

So one day, in pain, or bearing the burden of anxiety, you say, okay, I cannot write. Not today, today even the gods would exempt me. Does that work? No, of course not. Especially today, when the gods seem to have exempted you, or, perhaps, they mock you, today, you must write, must write badly if you may, but write, force every cell into writing, whatever comes out of this wretched mind and unwieldy fingers. That, is commitment, they say. And that, makes you a writer.

This is a noble, stoical thought, and one, I am sure, will make great authors out of many a fool. 

Just that, I do not think this has any meaning. I mean, you know, this is pure rubbish. Keep dreaming. Good writers, whoever they may be and by whatever measure, have no clue how or what works, and that is about it. These simplistic admirers of commitment, a word I am not particularly fond of, speak of the mystical and ephemeral as if it has meaning.

I mean, come on. If writing and art is truly as heaven-sent and transcendental as you make it out to be, tell me, is there anything you can really say about it. 

No. 

Something makes us write. Something there is that we write. We take essential human language and gossip and turn it into transcendence. Why?

Who knows. 

There is the wind and the sound of birds and the little pit in you tummy asking you for pleasure. What else do we know. Nothing. 

Write happily. Write well. Write again and again. But never, I beg you, never, take yourself so seriously.

You aren't a writer. You're a man. It's alright. You'll die ignominiously. It's a thankless life.

Find sorrow in dusk.