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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: Quantus on July 09, 2012, 07:31:31 PM
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Why do you write?
Do you just have a burning desire to put pen to paper, or find something therapeutic in the act of typing? Do you have dreams of writing the Great American Novel? Do you yearn to see your name on the Best-Seller's List, and long for the day when you can write full-time? Is there a message you want to get out to the World, and you want to use your writing as a Vehicle of Change? Are your characters an adult version of imaginary friends, and you just like spending time with them? Maybe you are just an avid reader, and saw writing as the next logical step?
I have been thinking about this sort of thing recently as I realize more and more that my hobbies far outweigh my available time, so I'm curious what you all, the aspiring and accomplished both, have to say on the matter.
For me, its just that I have these ideas that I love to develop. Worlds, Systems (magic or otherwise), stories, and scenes are always bouncing around in my head, and I desperately want a good way to express them, to share them. I don't really have any larger ambitions than that. I'm an engineer at heart (and at work :P), so my life's ambitions are in a completely different field. And when you get down to it, I find most of the available methods of actual writing (typing, pen&paper, etc) somewhat tedious and cumbersome. The day vocal dictation software is good enough to flow conversationally with anything close to proper punctuation is probably the day Ill stop touching the keyboard. Hell, Ive even played with an EEG headset in the vague hopes of being able to control my computer more directly for creative works (an abysmal failure I assure you :-\ ). The truth is, if I could find a ghostwriter willing to work with me to record and polish my ideas into an actual manuscript, without needing thousands of dollars up front, I would be set and happy.
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Because I can't not write, basically. Given which, I'd certainly like to make some money from it; I wouldn't say I yearn for the day I can write full-time, because the odds of that seem too small for me to get worked up about, but it would certainly be nice not to have to worry about a day job. I don't write because I have a Message (that's what telegrams are for, or were anyway), but I suspect that my fiction probably conveys a fair bit of what I care about as ways to live &c. (Though taking my narrators as reliable indicators of my beliefs would not be a good idea in general; I'm not particularly interested in doing that, because it would be boring.)
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Because its the best way to make the voices in my head go away?
:)
In all seriousness, I have a ton of different characters and scenes playing out inside my head at any given time, and my options are:
(a) wait for another, established author to come up with something similar, or
(b) do it myself exactly as I want.
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I write because I like to entertain. Because it is easily the most lucrative skill I have and I would love to make money off of it if for no other reason than I have family land that my current career path will not allow me to help take care of. I think most importantly I write to pay back the writers that made me who I am. I owe so much of my personal strength, charisma, and nature to literature it isn't even funny. I've done a great many things to give back some of that. I've worked with kids for a long time because it's a way to give back, but my audience has always been small. Writing is a way to help more kids get to where I am(although not the most reliable one, as I know few people take as many of the lessons learnable from literature and use them the way I have.
My biggest selfish reason to write is that I can't get enough of the kind of literature I want. But I can write it, and as a discovery writer that process is much like reading a book, but longer and more fulfilling.
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I write because I read.....
A good story takes me away -- away from my wories, my frustration, and the other things that I don't want to think about. And I realized that I could do the same thing when I write. I can pour some of the negative emotion into characters and situation, and joy too.
From that, I felt the need to write. First with pen and paper, then a typewriter, then a computer. Fanfiction at first, but I've grown to start creating my own universes my own worlds to explore.
I realize that in some way I'm passing the gift on to someone else -- to take them away from their own worries and stress. ANd if I can do that, I've done my job...
Craig
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I write because I get these really great ideas (at least i think so) and I come up with stories and scenes, and i don't want to forget them, so i write them down, and they usually come out great. And then i try to string them together, which doesn't come out so great.
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My initial love of writing began when I started reading. I wanted to create the magic I experienced while reading a book. I was (and still am) charmed and amazed at how well selected words can make the written page seem more real than life.
Later, I loved to write because it was a way to escape the difficulties of my life. It was a way to travel to somewhere else, somewhere pleasant, and to surround myself with people who cared about me -- total escapism. Also, in life I saw, and experienced, evil deeds being done without the perpetrators being punished. In my writings, evil doers always got their due, and never got away with what they did.
Now, writing is an urge so deep, so demanding of action, that I consider it primal. I write for the same reasons, however with life experience, I also write in order to put forth ideas, and ideals. To stretch my imagination, and invite others to join me on the trip. And, I write to have fun.
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it is something to do during my lunch brake to spend max time in libary and avoid serten people
it justifies talking to my self
it lets me use my imagination and be creative
i enjoy it
(i need any other reasons then the last one rely?)
also if i even get good enough yeah it would be cool to do it profetionly one day maybe
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It keeps my overactive imagination in check.
If I don't write for a while the characters I have hijack my dreams.
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It keeps my overactive imagination in check.
If I don't write for a while the characters I have hijack my dreams.
In my case that's not all they hijack, and while them hijacking movie reviews is copable with, it is less good when they start hijacking the documentation of my code. (Perl with the style of an 1890s-1910s translation of Alexandre Dumas: not optimal.)
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day dreams in maths class seem to be kinda intresting
i some times have to write them down
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I started reading, then after a few years I wanted to start a used book store.
I started going to Baen.bar to get free snippets of works in progress from established authors. Then saw it was possible to read entire novels for free from aspiring authors, thought that was neat. Then said, hey there's so much drek in here anyone could do it. Put my money where my mouth was, pretty much failed. Got determined and then almost gave up, sinking back into the enjoyment of being a reader.
Becoming an Author of any kind became a life goal/accomplishment. Put my head to the grindstone, and smashed out a novel in one month. Raised my hands in victory and declared. Then began the epic two week editing process, when I realized there was no way I could make anything saleable by my lonesome.
Now I think I could really make a go of it. The last thing I want is to push an ideology down anyone's throat. Although it would be cool to have a book filled with a bunch of characters with conflicting ideologies who were all convinced they were right and never really resolve it, just take some real events from the world, and have each of them spin it into their own victory just like RL. Then as far as being a bestseller or top notch author like one of the greats. Sure it'd be great if everyone else recognized my unparallelled greatness but its not something I'm holding my breath for. Becoming a stable author in a publishing house or writing enough indie books to bring my active income from that up to a certain level would be enough all by itself. I don't need to make enough to get rich, just enough to have a life.
I don't need to tell stories so the bad guys always loose and good guys always win. I rather prefer to put the good guy through the wringer. Not everything I try turns to gold, why should it for the hero? Same thing with the bad guys, sometimes they win and you're left picking up the pieces. On the other hand, the good guy needs to enjoyable to follow so victory in the end... a delicate balancing act. You just have to remember that in the end they always get you at the drive through.
I don't have a compuslive need to write. I mean I do. But its not at such a significant volume that its enough to write a book with.
Honestly I prefer reading more than I do writing.
On the other hand I really love sci-fi and fantasy. I would like to give back a little bit and by that I mean, throw my had in the ring. If I put my mind to it I can do 'almost' anything. And by almost I mean I can't edit and that's about it. If I thought I was doing well enough with sales to make a go of it, depending on my circumstances I might just make a go of it. Certainly the dream at this point. It'd be real nice anyway.
The Deposed King
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The more technical writing I have to do, the more my desire to write my stories hits me.
I feel so much better when I get to unload the ideas pingponging around inside my head. Hell, on days when I feel really depressed I either dig out an old favorite (I usually get out some David Eddings), or I sit down to write.
I love doing it. I envy those with the ability to do it for a living. To create is a wonderful thing.
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I write because I love it. Words.... I love them. Putting them together in exciting ways to produce ideas and dreams..... Ultimate of Awesome.
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I like to write because I have stories to tell. As a child I played elaborate imaginary games and made up complex characters and background stories to fit into my imaginary world. I still have the imagination and still create scenarios, characters, and worlds in my mind but I would like to share them with others and see if they will get as much joy out of them as I have. I read books by some, certainly not all, published writers and say, "I could do better than that." I have loved to read as far back as I can remember. I loved a well crafted story. I love the way a good author can weave seemingly disparate parts together to make a seamless story. I love meeting characters in a book and them seeming as real as people that I know. I love all these things and I want to be a part of creating them.
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I like to write because I have stories to tell. As a child I played elaborate imaginary games and made up complex characters and background stories to fit into my imaginary world. I still have the imagination and still create scenarios, characters, and worlds in my mind but I would like to share them with others and see if they will get as much joy out of them as I have. I read books by some, certainly not all, published writers and say, "I could do better than that." I have loved to read as far back as I can remember. I loved a well crafted story. I love the way a good author can weave seemingly disparate parts together to make a seamless story. I love meeting characters in a book and them seeming as real as people that I know. I love all these things and I want to be a part of creating them.
^This for me as well. My biggest roadblock is that I dont think in word, I think in pictures. And not even useful pictures that I could do much in the way of Art with (its anchored in 3D in my head, and I can never manage to flatten it properly into a 2d image for drawing/painting type art. And its pretty hard to tell a story with sculpture).
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Okay I will admit it, I write for the money. Even so it only amounts to around 2% of my annual income, 10% if you count the tax deductions. Grin.
My wife is my coauthor, and she says that writing helps the voices in here head go away. Also it is something we can do together now that the kids are out of the house.
Regards,
Kevin
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I started to write a fanfiction in the DV mostly to strengthen my precarious grip on the english language. And because I really don't want to mess with established characters, I placed it in Europe, where Harry probably never will stumble over the places where my original characters interact with unofficial offshots of vampire courts, Sidhe and other dregs. That makes it an exercise in world building as well.
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I have stories and people in my head who want to come out and play, and they won't take "NO!" for an answer.
I've always been an organized daydreamer and a big gamer. Started playing A D&D way back in the day, moved on to MMORPG's. In City of Heroes and Star Trek Online I found myself constructing elaborate character descriptions for that limited little bio box, and found myself getting royally pissed that I couldn't fit more in. Then my fleet on STO started doing some literary challenges, basic stuff like "flesh out your character bio, explain how they came to be part of Project Christopher." That was last summer.
My 300 letter in game character bio is now up to 30,000 or so words.
It's on hold because one of the "Writing gigs" Kristine kindly shared got my brain hopping up and down. I got to thinking about how (and why) people in an highly advanced society could be forced to rely on things like steamers, zeppelins, clockwork while still keeping a tasty hard-science shell. (No use of Absurdium or The Ninth Ray Of Ether, for example.) That story's up to 24-25 K or so and going strong. Original characters who I created for The Devil in the DNA have jumped the fence, shucked their uniforms and serial numbers and are now running and frolicking in my own original world and story.
I just can't not do it. I guess my subconscious finally decided that the stories and characters in most games just weren't as fun as the ones gibbering and meeping in my head.
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I write because I must. It is simply in my genetic makeup. How it got there, I will never know.
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It lets me think through all the crazy theories and questions going around my head.
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It lets me think through all the crazy theories and questions going around my head.
Gets the crazies out FTW!!
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I resent that. I retain every ounce of crazy, they just get better thought out.
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I resent that. I retain every ounce of crazy, they just get better thought out.
*nods*
So they don't leak out and infect the innocent or so they leak out and infect the innocent?
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Maybe I should consider leaking some out *looks thoughtful*'
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Oooooo, you should. *nods*
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Or just keep it all in until your head explodes.
*nodnod*
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Or just keep it all in until your head explodes.
*nodnod*
Always with the explosions.
I prefer the leaking out of the ears method myself.
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Hey. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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Hey. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
If you've broken it, it's probably impossible to fix.
Unless you're a puzzle genius.
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What makes you think I'm not a puzzle genius?
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I'll infect you then. You'll be a crazy puzzle genius *smirks evily*
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You haven't been around long, have you? I'm already crazy dude.
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Oh good, hello what assylum have you escaped from. Mine was very nice but the meals absolutely suck. *holds out hand*
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I was in Arkham....
*grins*
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Some hole in the wall place in Val Halla.
*shakes hand*
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They tried to diagnose me but I broke the pyschiatrist.
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I broke the jail.
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I walked out the front door, I convinced the front desk person there job was to pretend to pay attention to people coming in and out but to really be wasting time. Therefore she would have to be fired if she noticed I was leaving because she was obviously paying attention. I like breaking people ;D
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So do I. The sounds their bones make when breaking are cool.
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I'm always surprised when a thread gets derailed.
Am I not the craziest?
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I don't know, I'd swap tales but I have to wait a few years to be able to legally tell them. ;D
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Wow, I leave for one weekend and the inmates are running the asylum! Ill bring you new markers if you go back to your into padded cells ;)
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Wow, I leave for one weekend and the inmates are running the asylum! Ill bring you new markers if you go back to your into padded cells ;)
Done!
*takes the markers and draws on your face before skipping away into the sunset.*
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Done!
*takes the markers and draws on your face before skipping away into the sunset.*
bah, like Id give you the markers before the door was securely locked. Give me some credit ;)
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You seem to be on the wrong side of the door...
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bah, like Id give you the markers before the door was securely locked. Give me some credit ;)
*pouts*
Me no draw on face?
*sniffle....*
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*grabs multi-color sharpies from his own pockets* WHat do you think I've been doing silly
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*grabs multi-color sharpies from his own pockets* WHat do you think I've been doing silly
*is happy*
Wheeeeeeeeee!
Gil!
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*hands wat some of his sharpies and sits down to draw on the walls*
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*draws on everybodies face!*
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*Holds up a squirt bottle filled with On Topic to fend off any would be face scribblers.*
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You DO NOT want to piss the nice Moderaptor off, kiddies...play nice.
And first person who tries to scribble on my face will be missing the sharpie plus
a fingers or two.
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Sworry *looks shame faced*
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Is okay - why don't you start up a Sharpie scribbling thread?
Then you guys can color stuff up to your heart's content.
Okay, I've started up a Sharpie thread in Forum games - have fun.
On topic - I write because I like to tell stories and I have stories inside that want out.
I also love to make people laugh.
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Soooooooooooooooo
I like to write poems.
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I've had the writing bug ever since I was 10 or so. Got the bug from my dad and one of my sisters (I've got three older sisters). When we were kids, my dad wrote these action/fantasy stories in which we were each the main character. Don't remember a thing about mine, except seeing him type it on his mom's old school Royal typewriter, bind it in a green folder, and then read it to me before bed--all I remember about the story itself is that the name of the main character's was just my name spelled backwards.
That was 1991/1992, and I was 5ish. Fast forward a few years and I started reading voraciously. Drama, historical fiction, sci fi, fantasy, Westerns, thrillers, etc. I read 'em all. I read Les Miserables when I was 8. By that time, I'd read Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit at least four times. My mom home schooled us, so I had tons of time to read. All four of us were voracious readers, though I had the biggest appetite for books of us kids. Still do. Anyhoo, my parents must have spent a small fortune on buying enough books to keep our appetites sated, since by the time I graduated high school, we had something like 1500 books in our house. And on top of that awesome collection, I was a biweekly fixture at the library, coming out with armfulls of books each time.
Getting back to the 1990s, the middle of my three older sisters was writing a series of short stories (just for family consumption, she never tried to get them published). I'd read hundreds, if not thousands, of books by that point, but had never tried my hand at writing. When I read a book, I really get into it, kinda like being plopped down into a Star Trek holodeck program. I wrote my first short story, a really bad, totally unintentionally funny Western in 1999. While that was a ridiculously horrendous attempt at writing, it flipped a switch in my head. Instead of just descending into a holodeck every time I opened the pages of a book, now the holodeck programs started writing themselves in my head. I've always had an extraordinarily vivid imagination, and that first attempt at writing shifted it into hyperdrive. Unfortunately, the next seven years of story telling attempts (if my count's correct, I tried 9 different novels and 4 short stories during that time span, all unsuccessful) were not sufficient to enable me to put these awesomely vivid ideas down onto paper. Civilizations rose and fell, space empires thrived and collapsed, men fought against fuzzy giants, a race of leopard-people aliens appeared in NYC, ancient Druids fought against the Romans, men walked among and fought with the gods, and a single teenager began a dynasty that stretched over thirty planets and 4000 years, all in my head, all in vivid Technicolor and surround sound. None of it survived the transition to paper.
When I went off to college, I threw myself into studying history, mostly the American Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression... ;D) and put writing aside. During one of the many visits we made to Civil War sites (forts, sites of battles, stuff like that), I found out that if I physicially touch the remains of a site, I can envision it in action. I made that discovery when we visited the remains of an earthenworks position the Confederates had erected on the edge of a swamp. All that remained of the fort were two of the earthenwork walls, now completely overgrown with trees and shrubbery. I touched it and felt myself in the middle of the action that was that fort's claim to fame, when the Northerners tried to attack the fort from the swamp at around 2:00 in the morning, hoping to take the Confederates by surprise. I could feel myself slogging through the swamp, feel the light chill of the night air, feel the damp wool, so on and so forth. I mean, it was like I was actually there. I spent a summer in college studying in Spain. Visiting the sheer number of historic sites there was like shooting up. ;D
After that, my creative juices began flowing again, and I started my hand at writing once more. First two novel attempts were flops, but my writing ability has greatly improved. As I read, I get more and more ideas for my own writing. Now I even literally dream up ideas for stories. In fact, the short story I'm writing right now is actually 95% pulled straight from a dream I had a couple weeks ago.
...Um, so why do I write? I write because I love it! My head is overflowing with ideas, characters, entire series of books, and it gives me immense pleasure to (attempt to, at least) put them on paper. At any given moment these days, I've got anywhere between four and seven different short story/novel/series ideas floating around, spanning genres from sci fi to fantasy to historical fiction. That's why I write, to try and put them down on paper as they appear in my head. So far, my success rate is hovering right around 0%, but the process is more important to me at this point than the result is. I'd love to get other people to read my works...but it might help if I actually finish writing one so they'll have something to read! 8)
I'm currently trying to hash out this one short story, and if I'm finally successful (after 15 years and about !), then I've got a whole series of short stories planned. I've also been toying with a novel, but won't really sink my teeth in it till I (hopefully) finish this short story. I'd love to be able to publish these stories and keep them coming, but it's very decidedly a work in progress. For years, my dream career has been swim coach/author. At this point, I can't support myself on either one, but it is my (years away) end goal!