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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: Velkyn_Faer on February 03, 2007, 12:35:08 AM
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This is fairly simple, though the answers might not be. What drives you to write? This can be anything, from fanfiction to fantasy to sci-fi to romance. What makes you sit down at the keyboard or with that pen and paper and begin to form that world?
For myself, I just like the feeling of breathing to life a new world and people to inhabit that world. I have called it 'playing God' before, and I feel that term is a fairly good description. When you write, you can change history, the future, or the present. You can create a whole new living, breathing world with thousands of characters that are indeed out there, even if you do not write about them specifically.
Also, there's just something cool about the world you create, and the characters. You know them better than anyone else in the world, know every aspect of their lives. It's just a cool feeling.
So tell me, why do you write?
Velkyn
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I set up people I like or find interesting or intriguing, give them a situation that's screwed up, and then try to completely immerse myself in those people. I love that, when I really fall into the story and I have no knowledge of time passing or what's going on around me. I love it when I stop because I have to pee RIGHT NOW and I realize it's six hours since I sat down at the computer. I love it when I read back over stuff I've written and have literally no memory of having written certain phrases so that, in reading, I go, "Woah... Good one."
I love when I can scare myself, or thrill myself, or make myself cry. I love crafting the scene just so to dredge up a particular emotion, or manipulating a setting to create just the right atmosphere. I get downright giddy when a friend reads something I've written and says, without me prompting them, that I gave them chills where I wanted the reader to get chills or made them lose track of the world when they read just like I do when I write.
I couldn't NOT write. I'm an addict.
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I write because if I didn't let the words out, they'd scratch up the furniture and piss on the carpets.
Seriously. I'd go crazy. Writing is the one form of work that I truly enjoy, even when it's painful and stressing me out. It's the one thing I can see myself doing for the rest of my life, and I pray to God that is what I'll end up being able to do. I write because writing makes me want to continually expand...expand the places I've travelled to throughout the world, expand what I know about science or mythology, expand the people I know, the foods I've eaten. If I don't, I'm going to be one dull wit sooner or later, because life itself is what becomes the answer to that ubiquitous question: "Where do you get your ideas?"
There's a lot of unadulterated joy in writing...as I'm sure many people with that creative drive have experienced. Am I always happy with my writing? Hah. Plenty of days I look back on a mudslide of words and wonder if there were any bodies buried that I should take the time to dig up. But no matter how much market research or rewriting or critique groups or writing conferences...I always come back to the blank page, and some words pawing at the door to be let out.
www.jrvogt.com
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Because I love to do it, because it is an escape, and because it's going to be my profession.
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I write because I have to.
The Abstruse One
Darryl Mott Jr.
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I write because my imagination is bursting with stories and ideas that demand to be told.
Also I seem to be addicted to do the stuff that people say I'm good at. So when my 5th grade teacher informed me about how good my writing was, I kept doing it.
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Because I can.
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I write so that the voices in my head will shut up long enough to let me sleep and not sneak in elsewhere; because while i can cope with a film review going off into some specific character's take on the interior decoration, it would do me no good at all for the documentation for the programs I write to come out in the mode of an early twentieth-century Dumas translation.
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Because no one else in my family approves of me writing fiction. I have no support whatsoever. They especially opposed to contemplating a future of me as a writer. Yeah, I'm a rebel :P.
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I can do whatever I want with it! I can include all the random pieces of information I adore, without predjudice!
and I simply love it.
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It's great theropy. It just happens in my head all the time, I might as well jot it down on paper.
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Because otherwise my brain would have exploded long ago from the sheer swarm of the ideas in my brain. Dang things multiply like rabbits, I swear...
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I write because characters and stories are always popping into my head. I could sit and imagine them all day and feel an endorphin like joy. Getting them out on paper is like the physical manifestation of that...and hopefully it gives others joy too.
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I write because ever since I can remember, I've had the instinct to write. I've been writing stories since I learned how to write in kindergarten. Granted, I'm much better now that I was when I was five, but I've been writing my whole life.
I never really made a decision to write, I just always have written. Just like I've always breathed, blinked, and ate...it's just an inborn desire - no, a need - to create stories. I'm only truly at ease in my own head if I've written something.
I can't really explain it...I just do it.
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I discovered I was good at it. No burning muses . . . no desperate need to get the story told. Just a simple "seems a shame to let it go to waste." ;D
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I love to write because it is a way to express your creative mind. This is why I like to write.
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I write because it lets me release pent-up emotions through pen and paper, rather than through sexual frustration.
;D kidding. but the "release emotions" part is real enough. I'm an angsty teenager.
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I write cause no matter how good real life seems fantasy is generally better.
that and I been told a few times that I'm good at it.
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I write because things in my head go FTL and I have a symbiotic relationship with the keyboard. :D Plus my (creative) writing is good. (About my essays...well...)
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I write because it's fun. Because it's a fantastic escape from my very practical profession. Because I'm a creative person at heart but for some reason I keep thinking I can be good at the sciences.
Because I have dreams that demand to be told. Because I can hear the music, sometimes, that underlies the scene that I'm writing, and my fingers can't do anything other than type, or put pencil to paper.
Because there are authors out there that make me clutch a book to my chest and say, damn. I hope that someday I will have a novel out there that does the same to someone else.
Because my imagination runs away from me, sometimes, and I get frustrated when I can't follow. Because people tell me that I'm pretty good at it (though some might have a little familial bias). Because I always have, and I hope I always will. It's taken a while, but I've found out that writing is what makes me happiest.
~Cal
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because i became frustrated with trying to find something i wanted to read from other authors. i started picking up books to read and invariably put them down in disgust, snarling, 'i can write better than this.'
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I write because things in my head go FTL and I have a symbiotic relationship with the keyboard. :D Plus my (creative) writing is good. (About my essays...well...)
Amen to the last part! My writing is the same. I could sit for hours turning out a sci-fi or fantasy story, but the second someone asks me to write an essay I find I have better things to do. This frustrates my teachers to no end.
Taylor
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I started writing as a way to escape from my mom's cancer for a bit. Then, I fell in love with my characters. now, I can't get to sleep without writing a little bit each night.
That, and if I didn't write, I'd go insane from the attacks from the Plot Bunnies.
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I think Alexander Pope wrote:
Why do I write?
What sin unknown
Dip't me in ink
My parents or my own?
I write because I need to. I have a very practical job that is all-too steeped in reality. I use a lot of creativity in my teaching, but sometimes stories and characters fall into my brain and demand to be expressed.
I completely understand what Terry Pratchett wrote about ideas floating through the multiverse and lodging in people's brains.
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Because if I don't my characters won't leave me alone. They pop up in my dreams. I find myself creating plot lines for them in my head at weird moments. I find myself thinking how would they interact with this other character, and playing out scenes in my head. The only way to keep my brain mine is to devote some time periodically to writing them down. That seems to keep them content. ;D
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It's the only thing that keeps me going. I can write, or sit around and wait for the next book in a series to come out. My best writing comes out when I'm mad at someone, usually my parents or my brother... I wrote something around 20 poems between august of last year and april of this year... But I also dwindle into actually writing stories. I'm about to start writing a fantasy story.. working on the plot. gtg...
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Hmm… how about an itemized list?
1. It’s fun!
2. I could give up dreams of being a writer easily enough. I just couldn’t give up on the actual WRITING.
3. Putting the escapist fantasies in my head into print is cheaper than renting or buying someone else’s.
4. I work until I drop and I live an hour’s drive from anywhere. I can’t think of anything else to do with my scant free time.
5. I could pour hours of lifetime into writing and not even notice the passage of time. The present job makes this something of an inconvenience, actually. I don’t care. See #1.
6. Figuring out how characters work actually helps me understand and cope with real people. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but real people are REALLY weird. Also, annoying. :D
7. I live almost entirely in my head. Writing gives me something tangible to show for it.
8. I’m probably never going to get back to college. But I can still be everything I ever wanted to be…for a few pages. :-\
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For me, writing is like giving birth. The story is here inside me, and then it needs to come out. I could no more stop writing than I could have stopped from having my babies. If only publishers reacted to new authoirs like folks react to new babies.
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For me, writing is like giving birth. The story is here inside me, and then it needs to come out. I could no more stop writing than I could have stopped from having my babies. If only publishers reacted to new authoirs like folks react to new babies.
That pretty much hits the nail on the head for me too, Blaze. Except for that part where I'm a dude and have never given birth...but the other stuff is the same.
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BL, for you it is like passing a kidney stone. At least my husband says that that is as close as a guy comes to giving birth.
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So I can create a world. So I can create people, and have my way with them. And after a while, I beging to geniunely like them. The characters are the best part, creating a person, making them what they are, and they giving them a life, a past, motivations... and using them. Watching them grow, watching them evolve. Sometimes I don't even know what I'm writing- I'll have this whole plan for a scene but when i get down and write it, it ends up differently, just because it seemed- right. That's why I do it. I've always loved writing, anyway, always had the urge.
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I write to shut up the voices in my head even if no one ever reads what I produce. I write because when I told my mother I wanted to be a writer when I grew up, she told me I'd never be a writer and that I'd have "to work for a living." I've spent years trying to shut up her voice in my head.
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I write because the characters pester me and the scenes keep coming up in my mind.
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I write (what little I do manage to get down) because otherwise the ideas go running amok in my head. I'll be obsessed with them for weeks until I finally "forget" (i.e. give up on) them. And then I get mad at myself for not writing it down.
Besides, when I'm drifting off to sleep at night, I like to tell myself stories. And when I write it gives me more of a story.
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I write (what little I do manage to get down) because otherwise the ideas go running amok in my head. I'll be obsessed with them for weeks until I finally "forget" (i.e. give up on) them. And then I get mad at myself for not writing it down.
Besides, when I'm drifting off to sleep at night, I like to tell myself stories. And when I write it gives me more of a story.
see im the same way i tell myself stories to keep myself entertained . i write it down because i feel the need to.
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Because if I don't, they won't let me play on the Dresden RPG boards... ;D
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That was how it started for me, the stories in school because BORED, and at night to go to sleep. Those ones get lost because, darn it, I go to sleep & forget!
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I started writing to get something off my chest, and the work kinda hijacked me. Now its its own thing
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What makes you sit down at the keyboard or with that pen and paper and begin to form that world?
Wellll.... short form, the answer is....
because I can't *not* do it.
Long form... the reason I can't *not* do it is because I want to create a world that goes the way I want it to go. Where the people do the things I want them to do...
Used to be, that was a problem, because there was no conflict...
And then I matured, and realized that getting oneself freed from the conflict was what made the adventure interesting...
And now... it's a matter of, my real life has very little conflict and without it... I don't feel so alive...
does that make sense????
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I write for my own pleasure and have for years. Recently I realized that I had reached the best I could be. If I wanted to improve my craft I would need to open up to others. To have them help, guide and critique my work. I needed to study the basics, take classes and further my skill. I am enjoying the journey.
Usually I get jump started by something that happens in the real world and I am forced to address it through my writing.
To Hope concerning dreams, You can train yourself to remember your dreams. Keep a pen & paper next to your bed. When you awake in the dark, just reach for it and start writing. Don't even turn on the light. In the morning you will find the scratches and they will take your mind back to the dream. Some people call them dreamlogs. A Lutheran pastor taught it as a core curriculum class in a South Dakota college (large Am. Indian student population) and through study he learned a great deal about dreams and visions.
With enough time (okay maybe years for most but for writers and artists it can be learned in an incredibly short time) you can actually lay down to sleep and tell yourself to pick up the dream from before. Your dreams will become 3D and filled with your senses.
You can't image what a dreamlog will do for your writing! enjoy your dreams and your writing!
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I write to get my mind uncluttered. See, the way I see my writing is like this: over the course of the years I took things and stored them in my attic (or head) and when I try to go up there and find something, all I see is boxes full of things I don't need. How the hell does it multiply like that? Writing is my way of taking the stuff I don't need out, box it up, and sell it in a garage sale.
To add to this metaphor, people will (hopefully) buy these thoughts and use them, but when they do, they won't understand my attachment to them or why I had them in the first place. Just like things you get at a garage sale.
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I write because it's one of the ways that my mind analyzes and makes sense of the world. I write all the time, in my head. Putting the stories that result into electronic and paper form is simply the logical outcome of my continuous, ongoing observation and analysis of the big, mysterious world around me. :)
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I write to escape from reality for a few minutes a day and put my ideas and beleifs into something real. I also do it so one day I can be legendary. Naw, I already am Legendary, just need to get off the road for a while.
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I asked someone this question once, she replied simply, and in a matter that reminded me of Steve Zissou, "Revenge"
bless her zombie bones...
I see the scene in crystal quality in my head. Everytime I finish a scene, unless I'm not satisfied with it, it more or less is gone from my vision, because it's not there anymore, it's on the page. I'm pouring my scene out onto the page
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This may sound like a high-brow repsonse, but I write to make points with the story serving a giant exclamation mark.
One of my books was about vanity, another one was about TV, my newest is about underprivledge. I start with a point I'm trying to make and I build a story around it. It always works.
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To keep track of the scenes in my head. If I didn't write them down, I'd lose track and wouldn't know how/if they connect. Getting paid to write is a bonus. ;D