Friday, January 18, 2013

Why I Write

Sometimes people ask me why I write. I'd make more money in an office job, they say. Or I could train to be a nurse or something.

"Jews are not served here"
Photo: blog.kvadrati.com
I try not to laugh because I know they mean well. I bet some of Shakespeare's friends tried to help the poor guy out with a lead for a blacksmith job.

But it's more than that. I write because a lot of my fellow-humans are regularly being harassed, oppressed, killed and even tortured. I write because it's us ordinary English-speaking Westerners who can stop these atrocities - but only if enough of us choose to do so. I write fiction because most English-speaking Westerners would rather be entertained than educate themselves.

Photo: imdb.com
One of my biggest heroes is Harriett Beecher Stowe.

In 2013, we quite rightly see 19th-century slavery as a terrible and very obvious evil that no decent person would tolerate. But in Stowe's world, 'decent' people ate slave-produced molasses and wore slave-produced cotton. And besides, she was just one ordinary woman, so what could she do?

What she did, of course, was write a novel, and her Uncle Tom's Cabin helped America see slavery for the evil it was "...in a way that political speeches, tracts and newspapers accounts could not." (HarriettBeecherStoweCenter.org)

Our issues are different now, but no less real. A quick look at the headlines makes me think that maybe I've got the most important job in the world. I know I wouldn't trade it for anything.



Are you a writer? Have you taken the survey yet? 

A peer-helping-peer guild is coming together focused on providing free editing advice, helping you find more readers and whatever else indie writers need. So tell them what you need. Your participation means a more focused group, one that will truly help both new indie writers and established indie authors stand out and compete. 

Here's the survey. It's free and anonymous and only ten questions long:


Survey: What Indie Writers Need


For more information: 

1 comment:

  1. People write for all different reasons. You've obviously found your passion, which is awesome. For myself, I write for a couple of different reasons. I write fiction when I want to tell a story - I love a good story and I think most people do. So, I write fiction when I feel a need to express my creativity (or sometimes just to exercise those "muscles"). Most of the time very few people ever see my fiction. I haven't found an outlet for this writing yet - plus I probably haven't done enough of it.

    I also write reactively/responsively - reactively about things that are going on in our world, and responsively toward things other people have said or written. These things I post on my blog (and very few people ever see them, LOL). I've found that too much of my writing time is used to this end and too little in a more creative way. But sometimes you just have to say what's on your mind.

    ReplyDelete