Why Write?

At an event I once hosted, I asked the assembled writers this question. Besides the “practical ordering of my reality” type of answer, there were also some surprises. One woman had been a classical singer, but failed, and needed to embark on something else having to do with language. One man said, “I write to talk about what I read”—equally unassuming. I began to think that it would be much more stimulating to know why certain writers wrote than to engage with anything they had written, especially fiction or poetry—two ultimate forms needing years of practice. It’s debatable who said “everyone has a book in them,” yet the second clause of that sentence, as uttered by , is concretely dismissive of the first: in them.