Why do I write?

The easy answer is that I can't NOT write.

I blame it on my parents.  For as long as I can remember regular trips to the library were a part of our routine as a family.  My parents were always reading; reading on their own, reading with us as a family or reading one on one with each of us.  Books were everywhere in our house.  Sitting around the table after dinner as a family my father reading to us The Holy War and Treasures In the Snow, none of us balking at the time without the TV, are two specific times I still vividly remember.

But not everyone who reads a lot becomes an author.  True.  I think the next step was my mother taking us to McDonald's or later to mall food courts and watching the people there.  She would tell us what she imagined each person's story was.  Later she invited us to do the same.

My father was a published author.  They were small pieces in Sunday School magazines, but he was paid for his work and maybe because of the smallness of his efforts, once I started writing seriously he was supportive, critical, but supportive.

So since early on I've been surrounded by story - immersed in plot, characterization, description.  I can't see an interesting person out in public and not wonder about their story.  I can't hear an interesting phrase, like secondhand keys or Fisher Ertl and not hear the title of a book or the name of a character and begin to build around it.  I can't sit idly in a car waiting for someone or lie in bed at night and not continue the story currently festering in my brain.

I simply can't NOT write.

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