So: yesterday, I got buttonholed and asked just exactly why I write novels. The question came from an earnest and intelligent scholar of Ancient Hebraic and Arabic working on biblical texts. Treppenwitz would have had me reply ‘well why do you do that?’ but, alas…
He offered me a number what he saw as possibilities. I should have just accepted one… once again, the wisdom of hindsight is always 20:20. Was it the joy of seeing it finished? Did I enjoy the process? Was it the pleasure of turning my thoughts into words? I was a scientist, did I enjoy setting out the science? Or was it about the characters? And so on…
I did some remarkable floundering. There are all tiny droplets of rightness in all of those. Do they contribute much to the river? Most are right at times. Most are wrong at times. Most don’t matter. They aren’t why I do this. How do you explain this to someone who doesn’t have the faintest desire to tell stories? I tell stories not for myself but for OTHER people. And I started telling them because I was one of those other people who desperately wanted the kind of stories (and I assumed others) wanted. I don’t so much do it these days because I want to, but because it has become what I am. If I stopped… I’d be a lost soul, sans purpose, and full of nightmares as the ideas struggled to get out.
None of my books are driven by one thing. Not ever. Humans are a mass of conflicting and interacting things, of ideas and mental explorations. I know: There are people who don’t, to whom this is as alien as an ice-world orbiting Alpha Centauri. I find their heads as hard to get myself into the space of as they would find mine. To each of us the other’s head-space is a place of terror.
Yes, there is a strong streak of idealism in why I choose write specific books (there are so many books in me, I could choose any one of hundreds, some far more saleable than others). I believe we need to foster boys reading, and I don’t think there’s a lot in the current publishing model for them, and I think it will bite boy/men and society on the butt, so I tried to do something about it. I think rural kids get a lot of nasty social pressure to become clones of urban kids, so I wrote a book about it, showing a perspective that basically doesn’t exist in modern literature. I wrote books on what defined humanity, on why we should and could explore and colonize space, and much more. But none of those were ‘why I write.’
So: why do you write?
Mad Genius Club 
16 responses to “What am I doing this for?”
Why do I write? To tell stories. I remember a SF story from long ago where an alien expedition comes to prehistoric Earth where language hasn’t been invented yet. One member of the expedition wants to help the primitives develop, so he telepathically tells one a joke, leaving the implication that his “victim” would be forced to invent language to be able to tell the joke.
All cultures begin with stories. The loneliest, most isolated tribe of humans has stories. All religions begin with stories. Buddhism started with Siddhartha Gautama’s story. Genesis is a series of stories. The Egyptian and Greek mythologies are stories. Some of us just feel the urge to tell stories. Last year I met the most adorable 8 year-old at church who insisted on telling me a story. Yes, it was crudely done, but I had to smile and encourage her for it.
As to why writing rather than painting, sculpting, directing movies, doing standup, or any other outlet for my storytelling path, it just seems to be what suited me and what was available to me as a youngster, so I honed my craft my entire life.
As Frank said, I tell stories. Some are to educate, but first and foremost, they are to entertain.
It’s fun? At 70 do I need a better excuse than that?
I was talking to some folks about my impending departure from the day job so I could write full time. I explained I had a stack of books I wanted to write before I die, and that list kept growing and the time I had left was shrinking.
Damned if at the end of that conversation I didn’t end up adding another book to that list. (It was a good idea and they have a publisher.)
Lots of reasons why I started and lots more as to why I should have stopped, but I discovered in the past year or so that I have an audience composed of approximately ten very nice women who want to read what I’m writing. All of them are hard-working go-getters which I am not. I am honored that they are willing to spend some of their spare time being entertained by me.
I write because if I don’t, things leak. I have to tell the stories in my head, or I start telling them as I drive, which is Not Good. That people are willing to pay money for the stories, is even better.
“I write because if I don’t, things leak.”
They totally do.
If I write them, my characters get in there and solve whatever it is.
That I did all of it myself is unimportant. It still feels like they did it, and now it’s over.
It’s a little Odd, but I’m old enough now that I can hand-wave it all away as a charming eccentricity. ~:D
I can’t imagine *not* having stories in your head. Getting them coherently down on paper or electrons is a skill that can be learned, well or poorly . . . but not having stories?
Even the scholar mentioned above must consider several translations, play with them in his mind, and try to understand the writer’s intent. I think?
The creative writing process is much the same, but unconstrained.
I started writing because we had to return ALL our library books a week before we went on a trip, and I was going into word withdrawal.
I kept on writing to chase ideas out of my head and to wrestle with things.
Despite a hugely misspent life reading anything I could find, I didn’t have the ambition to actually produce fiction myself, until one day not too very long ago, after a pleasant morning following a foxhunt, it occurred to me to wonder what would happen if a modern huntsman found himself drafted to hunt the Hounds of Hell. How would that work out?
It didn’t need direct research (Hell, I majored in Comparative Mythology for all my techie career would use it), and I figured… well why not give it a try? Then I discovered that the writing fiction process had its own direct amusements, and I was committed.
Classic! My wife was once on a panel about Where Do You Get Your Ideas?. You might find it entertaining. https://frank-hood.com/2025/07/27/where-do-you-get-your-ideas/
That’s hilarious. Totally how it works, too.
“…what would happen if a modern huntsman found himself drafted to hunt the Hounds of Hell.”
That’s a great one. Love it!
I’m working on “what if a basement-dwelling nerd with a robot girlfriend ended up in Niflheim on Hela’s actual doorstep and met Garmr, the Hound of Hel?”
Snippet:
“Listen up, nerd,” came Alice Haddison’s voice in his helmet, right on cue. “Stick right there and don’t even move your head, just your eyes. Relax slowly until you slouch. If anything moves, don’t look at it. Watch it in your peripheral vision.”
“Copy,” said Jimmy, doing as she said.
“Describe your surroundings,” she ordered. Jimmy knew she was getting the full audio and visual from his armor, the Angels Inc. technology was good enough to make her feel like she was there next to him if necessary. She was prompting him to think instead of panic, which he appreciated right then.
“Ruined building, stone walls are pretty thick, a lot of moss on everything, no trees growing up in the middle which is weird. Maybe somebody cuts them. Snow and mist near the ground, no movement I can see, no heat on infrared except off in the mist there’s something big that is warm.”
Breeze stirred the mist and made the pine trees sway, revealing a little more. “There’s a stone path from the archway that goes across the building and leads into the woods. I see a wall off in the woods down the path a couple hundred yards, a door or a gate with two lit torches either side of it, something warm on the ground in front.” He looked at the thing on the ground, and realized it was an animal. “Holy crap that is a big dog,” he whispered.
It was huge. The size of a dump truck. And it was looking right at him.
“I think I’m busted,” he breathed as the dog stood up, revealing that it was on a chain. An immense but emaciated wolfhound, bones showing through shaggy, matted grey fur, skin drooping. It wandered easily out to the end of the chain and sat down, staring at him.
“Just relax,” Alice told him. “No way that thing can see you or smell you. Don’t look at it, look off to the side. Scan for movement.”
“There is no point trying to hide from me!” called the huge dog. “You should come here, mortal. The woods are dangerous.”
“Talking dog,” murmured Jimmy, gripping his fighting stick tighter. “Not good.”
“Lying talking dog,” said Beatrice, unimpressed. “Obviously he’d say that. He can’t see shit, Jimmy. You can walk right up to him and pull his tail.”
“Oh, right.” Jimmy remembered that everything in Niflheim lied all the time. Never told the truth. That was why they were not using their names on the radio. Obfuscation, to spoof eavesdroppers with eldritch powers they knew naught of.
“Have it your way,” said the huge dog, settling down to lie on the stone path. “I can wait. But you might give some thought to the boggles creeping up on you. They’re hungry.”
Jimmy remained completely still, flicking his eyes around the clear area inside the ruined building. There was no heat showing, but some of the moss looked a little different than it had when he arrived. One of the closer hummocks of moss had eyes.
I write because I’m a much more annoying person when I don’t. And because someone’s got to make use of the stuff that fetches up at the Junk Shop of Broken Stories: https://jaglionpress.com/2022/05/11/where-did-that-come-from-why-such-a-jumble-of-influences/
“So: why do you write?”
After a lifetime of reading, the book well dried up around 2008-2010. I swore I could do better than the crap I was seeing at the bookstore, and I’d been toying with an idea for a long time. So I wrote it down.
Roughly 2012 or so, Rosemary Edgehill was rash enough to encourage me (thanks Rosemary!) and Unfair Advantage was the result.
But then I was a Real Writer. (I have the official Sarah Hoyt Real Writer certificate and everything.)
So here we are, 13 years on. The stories keep going anyway, if I don’t write them they seem to pile up and intrude on my day. (It’s possible I could be a little weird.)
Why? because there are stories I want to read, and nobody else is volunteering to write them. I’d been thinking about writing for years, but what finally got me started was a VanDread fan-fiction story. I found it an interesting premise, read the first 5 chapters, and then…that was it. There was no chapter 6. The story hadn’t been updated in 4 years, and I was unable to contact the author.
If I wanted to read any more, it looked like I’d have to write it myself. So, I did. I figured I could wrap up the central plot in 10,000 – 12,000 words. Uh-huh.
8 years, 40 chapters and 220,000 words later it’s still not finished. I also toyed with some other ideas, and started writing 5 more stories. I’ve actually managed to finish 2 of them! Still working on the rest.
My first short story weighed in at 30,000 words. I did better with the second one; it’s only 14,000 words. What can I say? That’s what it took to tell the stories the way I wanted to write them.
Because I am a time binder.
(I presume most of this comity will get the reference)