Any aspiring or recognized writer is very likely to have heard one of a handful of reactions when talking about their work:
“I could never concentrate on something for that long.”
“How do you possibly find the time to do that?”
“I can’t imagine actually wanting to write for fun.”
And so on.
It seems that years of essays and formal papers have put a bitter taste in the mouths of many when it comes to the concept of writing. But yet there are some who range from simply enjoying writing in some or all of its forms to utterly reveling in it. So the question becomes, why? What value is it that some of us find in the art of crafting stories and expressing ideas via text?
Having consulted many people who call themselves writers, it would be a grievous understatement to say that reasons vary. To address the obvious first, there are those who simply do it for money. While writing professionally is certainly a facet of writing, and logic ultimately dictates that it is the kind that the widest audience is familiar with, there is far more to writing as a hobby than simply doing it to publish one's work for financial gain.
It is also worth mentioning that many people aspire to write and publish certain things on a professional level, but admit that most of the writing they do is either not on that level or not of a variety for which there is really a wide market for. So the question remains, why write?
For many, it is simply a way to decompress. Being able to sit down in a period of relative quiet and think about something other than the daily grind and the stresses that come with it is an unquestionably good way to alleviate stress and clear one’s head.
The great irony of this being that This is usually the rationale given for keeping a journal, but in truth that defeats the purpose entirely for some. Journals have a tendency to cause some people to ruminate about the very events they may want to escape from through their writing in the first place. This is not true for everyone and many people find journaling in some capacity to be very helpful.
Yet for some, writing either for decompression or, at a greater extreme, escapism, requires writing something that removes them from everything around them completely. Several people, such as myself, state this as one of the reasons they write stories.
For others, they feel that they just have a story in them that needs to be put to paper. More often than not writers in a wide array of movies and books are portrayed as fitting this mold. The somewhat reclusive individual perpetually hunched over a notebook or typewriter (or more recently a computer) clicking away at some great story that they feel they need to get out of their mind and out into the world.
While most people are not Jack Kerouac, there is still some truth to the idea that some people have a need to craft and type out a certain story that seems to sit in the recesses of their mind waiting to come out. For those to whom that is the case, the only limitation comes with their individual prowess for writing.
The third reason that many people cite for why they choose to write, both professionally and as a hobby, is that it is what they are good at. Go figure that people would choose to do what is they know they do well. This is also very often why people choose to write professionally, seeing as they have some confidence that what they put out will be received well by people.
But often it can also be more than that. People who realize that the act of writing in some capacity tend to do it more and engage in more activities that concern it. In time they find that they also do it for one or both of the other two reasons given here or perhaps another one altogether.
For my own part, as I believe I have some degree of personal insight into this. I do intend to publish my work professionally and also write for the media as a career. But on a personal level, I am very much an escapist which is why I write epic fantasies in my free time. It would also be fair to say that there is a degree of the other two categories in there as well. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think I was good at it and want to constantly get better, and I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t have a story worth sharing. So these are the reasons that both I and many others write, in whatever form it may take.
