Why do you write?

Ah, the million dollar question.

Once you pronounce yourself a writer, you get this question a lot. The answers vary among writers and authors, but I’m here to tell you about mine in the hope that I’d get to convince you (yes, you!) to keep writing, no matter what.

I’ve written short stories from when I was a kid, in my native language. I seem to have lots of ideas back then & if I didn’t write them down, I’d draw them as comics. But my ‘real’ writing experience didn’t start then.

It started when I had my very first bad heartbreak. It was my first year of uni and I was unprepared for the reality that this person was not waiting for me. I became obsessed for a while, couldn’t think of anything else but him and how to get him back. It was unhealthy.

I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t watch any movie, because everything would just remind me of him. (I did read Harry Potter though, the 3rd book just came out. It was rainy and gloomy, perfect for my mood that time.) Music was the same. It was hard.

It went on for a few months, until I finally picked up a notebook and started writing… to myself. I started with something along these lines: ‘One day, my future self will look at this moment and laugh, maybe because we’d be together again, or maybe because I’d realize how ridiculously hopeless I was.’

I was still hopeful when I started writing into that notebook, treating it as unsent letters to him. After a while, the hopefulness changed into frustration, and afterwards, anger. It was ugly, full of downs and more downs. My handwriting was sometimes neat, sometimes jagged and the paper dented with the pressure I made while writing the angry words. Some pages were crumpled and dog-eared because of my tears they caught.

More months went by, and for whatever reason (maybe I was running out of pages), I started reading the notebook from the beginning again… and that was when I realized how silly I was for clinging on to him and our non-existent future together. 

After many times of doing this on repeat (writing, re-reading, writing, re-reading–my real life was pretty much on pause during those times), it was time for me to move on to the next stage.

I let it go. I let him go.

No one else has ever read those notes. I don’t even have them with me anymore, but that was a turning point for me. Why? Because I wrote it from the deepest corner of my heart. And what did I get out of it? Relief, mostly. I felt like I was healed.

That was when I knew that writing, for me, will never be for pleasing or impressing others. I do it to express myself, even when no one is around to read it.

Why should it be any different now when I write books? Why should I care if anyone read my books? It shouldn’t. It’s just a lovely bonus if someone did, that’s all.

The most important thing is that I’ve expressed what I wanted to express, let out what I wanted to shout from my heart. I know this sounds like a cliché, but ever since that ‘turning point’, when I write my stories, I pour my heart out to it. Like Voldemort and his Horcruxes, I put a slice of myself into my books, always.

To me, writing is personal. It’s a journey, much like life is, for each and every one of us. Some people let their journeys be shown to people, and in this case, they become the writers we know. Some journeys touch us, some are inspirational, and some don’t come anywhere near us. But that’s life. And even if these ‘invisible’ journeys don’t touch us, their journeys don’t end there.

Now, with 2 books out and a new Work In Progress (WIP) brewing, I can’t tell you how many times I thought of quitting. I don’t get enough sales, I want to quit putting my books out there. I read someone else’s book that is so good it makes me feel like an impostor, I want to lock myself in a room and mope. I get a less than 5-star rating for any of my books, I want to stop writing altogether.

But then I remember the question at the beginning of this post and ask it to myself. Why do I write? If I said I write to express myself, then what does all of the above (paragraph) matter? That’s right, it doesn’t. Those things: the sales, how my writing is perceived by others, the ratings/reviews–they are but a bonus. When I remember how ‘far’ I’ve come from only writing to myself to self-publishing 2 books and actually selling them to more than just 1 person, and even getting any ratings/reviews at all… this is much, much more than I ever dreamed of achieving from my writing journey.

I was here, and I wrote. I am still here, and I’m still writing.

And so are you. You were here, and maybe, you’ve written something. You are still here, now, and I hope you are still writing. Maybe, one day your writing will touch me, but even if they never will, at least they were written and you’ve expressed yourself through it. I’d like to think you’ve let yourself get healed this way.

So please, keep on writing. Do it for yourself.