WHY WE WRITE

 

Word Collage by Nina Naomi

Why do we write? "He has no unpublished thought," the editor of a scholarly journal once told me about a professor.  Some people write solely for publication. They love to construct sentences, but only if there is a readership for them.  I am not that person.  My prayer journals, volumes now, are not meant to be read; I mark them "Private:  Do Not Turn the Page."  But here I am blogging.  How is a blog different from a diary, from the tattered journals we hide in our drawers?

 

There are 5 volumes of Virginia Woolf 's (1882-1941) Diaries, unguarded and not written for publication.  I've been reading these.   If we read so that we are not alone, do we write (or publish) for the same reason?  Or can we write simply to know ourselves better, to create and enjoy all that words can do?  A rhetorical question, I believe.

Emily Dickinson wrote, 

A word is dead

 When it is said

 Some say.

 I say it just begins

 to live that day.  

She is talking about the spoken word, whose power is immense. We know that words can wound or heal. They live forever.  If you've ever tried to forget something you or someone else said, you know the eternality of words.

 

This is true whether the words are meant for us or not.  I have a friend whose mother said something hurtful about her in a letter to another.  The letter came to light years later and the hurt was as fresh as if no time had passed.   

Words create an obligation.  They must be chosen as carefully as a name.  Nothing exposes more. Words show who we value, where our allegiances lie, what our needs are and if we can be trusted.  Think of the scandals of public life.  Think of those we love and how the pain they cause us invariably involves words.

 

Some writing (speaking too) is high in secondary gain.  Example, the humble brag: "When the bad news came I had to reschedule my interview with CNN"--a sentence I actually read.  Such words leave the speaker barer than they know.    

But writing to help, to uplift, to inspire--writing that harms not one soul present or future and gains for oneself at no one's expense . . . this is writing of a different sort.  Anne Lamott (1954- ) says that writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation.  They feed the soul. Yes, we say.

 
The French writer Anais Nin (1903-1977) says, "We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect."  Such writing needs no reader, no audience.  Like looking at one's own picture albums.  "I was here." "This is what I looked like." "This is what we did that day." Writing, like our photos, documents our life. For that no applause is necessary.

Gloria E. Anzaldua (1942-2004) says that she writes to convince herself she is worthy.  I like that, writing as a kindness to oneself.  Gao Xingjian (Nobel Prize in Literature 2000) says, "Writing eases my suffering."  How many of us don't journal for that reason? In writing our sorrows, we bear them.    

Maybe the difference between what should be kept private and what needn't be has been explained by Amy Tan(1952-).  She says it's a luxury being a writer because all you ever think about is life.  Your own history may be the context, we might say.  In a memoir or blog it invariably is.  But, not our ego, our minutiae, our needs.  Rather:  Life.