Why do we keep writing?
Even when no one's listening. Even when the page stares back, blank and cold. We write through doubt, distraction, and dry spells. Is it habit? Hope? Hunger?
This must be the single most important question every writer—at any stage of their career as a writer—asks themselves at some point. Yet the answer will vary. Everyone will give you a unique response and, including yourself, as your answer may change over time.
We can only try to imagine why people write.
Some writers may be lucky enough to live off it, and so writing may be either a job—amusing or not, boring or not, but just work. They may write to market, whatever sells faster, or whatever they are hired to write.
Others, however, and regardless of being so fortunate as to live off it, may still write what calls to their heart—themes, topics, or whatever that is. When thinking of this, a few speculative authors come to mind… but I’m inclined to believe this is more the case for non-fiction or literary fiction writers. A sad consideration, thus I hope to be wrong.
Yet as I hinted before… our reasons change as we write.
We all approach the first book with either dread (can I do it?), hope (there must be someone out there waiting for this book!), dreams (I’ll be famous! I’ll win awards!), or others. We write… for some reasons, all of them valid, even if at that point—when we begin penning the first words—that ‘why’ is not entirely clear to us.
But there is one, or we wouldn’t go on; we wouldn’t finish, wouldn’t push past revisions, past beta-readers, past the reviews when they start to come. We wouldn’t stare at the non-sales, the lack of reviews, the poor engagement… only to start another story, another piece, perhaps with renewed interest.
So why do we keep writing?
I asked myself that question when, not long ago, I spoke with someone in the writing community. This person told me, in no uncertain terms, that they had once written a few short stories, failed to sell them to long-standing magazines, and had the "arrogance to believe these were good stories but that they weren’t finding the right audience."1
At that moment, the comment took me aback but as the conversation moved forward, branching into other bookish themes, I didn’t have the opportunity to reply—but the comment stayed with me. It left me thinking.
There was something in that statement that bothered me, and I couldn't quite point my finger at it.
It took me several days to understand…
Every writer has once written their first story. Most of us—including myself, and am not ashamed to admit it—thought it was the greatest book ever written; ground-breaking, praise-worthy, the next Hugo/Nebula/BigThing in the making.
And you know what? It was great, even if not for the reasons we thought.
Writing something is not an easy feat; it is a honed craft, something we acquire after practicing non-stop, picking up the ugly pages and learning from them. Many of us come to writing from many different backgrounds, and so pushing ourselves to learn wordsmithing, world-building—especially for speculative fiction—to develop nuanced characters with interesting arcs, to define intricate plots with their ups and downs, to write a story and finish it… that is a testament to willpower.
It stands as proof that when we commit heart and mind to the task, we can summon something from nothing—imagine it, shape it, and give it voice in words.
Yet understanding the magnitude of our feat is not enough to keep writing.
We keep writing because we believe that, somewhere, there is someone (or many ‘someones’, hopefully) who can be as passionate about our story as we are—and that is what fuels our hopes and dreams, pushing us to go on.
It carries us through writers blocks, to pantsers’ dilemmas or plotters’ convoluted schemes. It help us write, edit, tweak, write some more, think it through and change it yet again.
And simply because we believe, deep down our hearts, that someone will love what we wrote, and that it can one day change their life.
But we are writers and our imagination is limitless…
—and so we imagine ourselves winning awards, producing fancy special editions with full-colour illustrations, having fans that would draw fanart, cosplay as our characters, get our book content tattooed... and because of that, we keep going. We tell ourselves that it will change, that our audience is somewhere, and so we keep writing. Book after book, regardless of the sales, of the reviews, of whatever little-to-no following we may have—we keep going.
But is that arrogance? Or something else?
To me, it is not arrogance to believe that our first stories are great—because it was great, for the skill-level we had when we penned it.
It is not arrogance to imagine we can win awards, get fancy editions, so on and so forth. It is not arrogance to believe someone may like what we produce or, even better, be willing to pay for it. It is not arrogance to have hope.
We have to believe in our first story, not because it is flawless, but because it teaches us we can create. We have to be the first believers in ourselves, or we won’t be able to pursue this craft for long.
If we don't believe that what we are writing is worth something, then we will quit. If we quit, we are neither going to improve nor give ourselves the chance we deserve. And if we don't give ourselves that chance… well, we are never going to find those ‘someones’ who would love our books.
That was why the word "arrogance" bothered me.
To keep writing demands resilience, and that only comes from failing, learning, and returning to the page again and again.
So, if you are a writer, let me ask you to keep writing. It takes time; everything takes time.
I cannot promise you success, but I believe in you.
Livia~
Yes, they used that precise word; arrogant. It was was a bit shocking when I heard it, and so it prompted this essay. What can I say? I like to mull over things!