Why Write?

I'm currently taking a class that explores how creativity is manifest and experienced by writers. A friend of mine who took the class a year ago made a video interviewing many of the Vandy writing faculty and students about why they write. When first asked the question, almost all of them stared blankly, said "uhh," laughed uncomfortably, and the like. Because when faced with a question that defines your entire existence, who can really answer quickly or comfortably? We've been reading this book called The Midnight Disease that establishes, among other things, that poets are the craziest of crazies: high incidence of depression, manic depression, schizophrenia, etc. But one of the other things it says is that people who experience depression (and I'm simplifying here) seem to be better able to perceive what's actually happening around them, what people's true intentions are and such.

In trying to pinpoint why I write, I think this pseudo-revelation about depression actually ties in. I spend my entire life observing people, thinking about why they do the things they do, wondering over how different experiences shape and change them; it's like psychology without the science. It is not just a fascination, but an obsession. It is what I do more than anything else. But why? When it comes down to it, I believe that people are really all we've got. Yes the environment is important, yes we couldn't survive without animals (and I love my Leelu to pieces) but my life would be completely empty without people. And roiling around in the details that make them tick is my favorite activity. Writers are really sociologists and psychologists without the degrees and the money. To succeed in writing about people, we have to have a heightened understanding of them. And maybe this is why so many of us end up depressed. We actually confront the flaws; we revel in them; we are both repulsed and fascinated. And, speaking only for myself? Maybe we stay in relationships with the most complicated ones longer than we should in the hopes that we'll figure out what made this one so damaged.

To say simply that I get into difficult relationships because it's good material is too pat. I am drawn to complicated humans. I am stretching my empathy muscle. Sometimes (oftentimes) this can make me sad. But it's not a sadness I regret. So why do I write? I write to celebrate the complications, to share these complicated people in my life with others, to (hopefully) pass on that feeling I have when I've read something I identify with that is almost like being punched in the chest. It's visceral. It hurts. But it's also warming in its ache.