Nobody asks you write to anything and it is probably because nobody cares what you think.
That was hyperbolic and cynical. Of course, some people care what you think but they don’t require you to express it to them in one thousand spell-checked words. So, why would anyone who is not paid to write bother doing it?
I didn’t have a desire to write until I was midway through my PhD thesis. I’m embarrassed to mention that I did a PhD as I think it makes me (one?) seem pretentious, but it is relevant to mention my degree here since it is the only time I’ve had to write a book. When I set out to write my thesis, I saw writing up as a means to an end, but as I was working through it, I found that I was enjoying the process of writing. Putting your thoughts into a coherent order is satisfying because it replaces a vague sense of how things are with some clarity. By the time I had finished writing up, I genuinely cared about what made a piece of writing well-formed. I felt, though, that I didn’t get to write in the way I wanted; instead, I had to write in a formal, neutral voice and there wasn’t space for personal flair or meandering thoughts. So while I had enjoyed writing with the goal of precision and clarity, I felt that the process of writing up had ultimately taught me some mechanical tricks about writing and editing.
I finished writing up in 2021 and I didn’t feel like I had the time to write again until the end of 2023. Writing as an adult is different to writing as a child. In school, you are made to write essays about things which are not near and dear to you, and you can’t imagine why anyone would want to read, let alone write, them. Indeed, nobody wants to read the essays written by children unless they’re paid to. Now, I get to write about what I want and explore ideas however I please. If I wanted, I could write a bunch of recipes as haikus and I don’t have to worry if what comes out is half-baked. Since I’m not trying to make any money from writing, I can quite happily write polemical essays on the overuse of brackets without worrying that almost nobody would want to read about the overuse of brackets. Being able to express yourself is freeing, and I suppose that is one reason why I want to write.
Writers are egotists. To some extent, I want to write because I want to look clever. George Orwell said so, and let’s face it, if you go through the effort of writing, you probably want other people to think you’re a bit clever. By mentioning George Orwell, I’ve attempted to look clever. When I read something that inspires me, I want to emulate it in some way. For example, you may have noticed that I nicked George’s idea to write an essay titled Why I Write. When I read a great piece of writing, it makes me want to write something. In the same way as watching Tony Hawk do a 900 and going “Yeah, I reckon I can do that”, reading something great and trying to do it yourself requires a bit of ego.
A writer’s worldview leaks into their writing, and maybe you will be able to detect my political beliefs despite me not writing Joe’s Manifesto: Solutions to the Problems in the World. However, to avoid any confusion, I think it’s worth being clear and candid here. I live life on easy mode as a fit and healthy, straight white cisgender middle-class man in the UK. That’s not to say that people with privilege can’t experience suffering. What I am saying is specific to me. The day-to-day stresses I face are trivial and normally self-inflicted by my disorganisation rather than systemically entrenched into society. In short, I want it to be as easy for a trans person to live as it is for me. I think that someone else telling you how it feels to live your own life is at best frustrating and at worse some kind of erasure. However, never mentioning serious problems is also a flawed mode of operation. So, I will try to balance things between tacit approval and mansplaining society’s problems.
Originally, I thought I would write tech blogs. I heard they were running out of people to do this and that’s why they’d invented ChatGPT. But then I read Come Dine With Me by GDPL. I’d never read a short story like it before and thought it was so great that I might give writing short stories a go. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, Things We Say in the Dark by Kirsty Logan and Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson were among some of my favourite books I’ve read in the past couple of years. I enjoyed the menacing and supernatural elements of these short stories, and I admire these authors for being able to tell a compelling story with brilliant characters in such few words. Unlike writing a novel, I can see myself being able to finish writing a short story. If it goes terribly, I can always stick to writing down cold hard facts and technical articles, I guess.
This entire piece has been a little self-indulgent, but now you know what some of my motivations are, and isn’t that nice? I think my motives are relatively mundane. Despite it being unlikely that anyone cares what I think, I want to write since I think it’s fun.