I seem to have found myself accidentally leading a pack of #bloggORS, so I’d probably best give my own response for the first prompt: Why do you want to write?

(Curious about the #bloggORS thing? Check here, and then, if you feel like it, join the revolution!) (It’s not actually a revolution, but damn, that’s fun to say.)

I thought that was an easy question when I wrote it.

Boy, was I wrong. I’ve been thinking about my own response for three days and haven’t yet come up with a satisfactory answer, so I’m trying a different tack: freewriting it while I do my habitual wander around my office at lunch, ready to edit later on… if any of this ends up making any sense.

I’ve tried explaining this kind of thing before, so much so that I have this cute pat answer that starts with a story my parents pinned to the kitchen noticeboard for an embarrassing number of years and ending with “I just sort of have to”. Well, that’s about as weak as water, so let’s try and come up with something better. (Rule #2 of the #bloggORS challenge is, after all, write from the heart.)

There is no ‘have to’ about writing. Not for me, anyway. I have no publisher pressing me for deadlines, and honestly, if I don’t post a blog this week or any other, precisely one person will care. (Me.) I’m under no obligation to tell any story at all, whether my own or a piece of fiction. I don’t have to do this. But I have a tendency to tell myself I do, which is perhaps a narrative to unpick in a separate post.

It’s true enough that I always have, on and off, in one form or another. I kept a paper journal for something like seven years solid in my teens (they’re in a box in my attic, wrapped in about half a roll of duct tape, with the warning: Caution — Potential Biohazard: Excessive Emo emblazoned on two sides. I suspect at the time I wrapped them up I was possibly still a little over-dramatic, but just to be safe, I’m not going to take a look until or unless I can get my hands on a hazmat suit). I have endless first drafts rotting on my hard drive, some just a few hundred words, one — known to friends as the Novel That (Still) Isn’t — over 100k. (Still determined to make that one the novel that is, someday — or rather the novel which is; whichever friend came up with the term ‘the NTI’ clearly wasn’t an on-again, off-again, when-it-suits hypocrite of a prescriptive grammarian like yours truly.)

Hell, I actually finished a fiction manuscript once. It’s pretty crap, but it’s got an optimistic Chapter One and a self-satisfied The End about 60,000 words later, with some kind of plot between the two.

So I’ve managed to establish that, at least sometimes, I do write, but I’m still struggling with why I do. Or why I want to, if we’re sticking to the question — and they are two different questions, and I chose the want to version deliberately.

There are probably a few parts to this.

Until very recently, what relatively little writing I did (note I’ve not exactly had anything published) was all fiction, so, in the parlance of your GCSE English teacher, that would suggest the primary purpose of the text is ‘to entertain’. Okay, that makes sense. I can acknowledge that one as probably true, but perhaps not the whole truth.

(We’re discounting seven years of journals here because… do you want to admit to what’s in your private diary between the ages of about twelve and sixteen? I’m sure as hell not. I’m doing a fine job of forgetting all about the worst parts of puberty, thanks.)

It makes sense as an answer. “Why do you want to write?” “To entertain. To produce something people enjoy reading.” Yep. Noble goals, and all that.

But it’s rather egocentric, in its way: putting myself in this position of being someone whose writing is worth reading. There’s another, deeper one, which is very much in the why I want to category, and perhaps (so far) less in the why I do.

There are things I need to get out there.

I’m struggling over these next few sentences. They’re there in my head, but the idea of putting the words on a (web)page, where they’re going to be forever… that’s hard. Admittedly, I’ve said most of this before, much of it on Twitter: it exists, if you care to really go digging, but I doubt many people would bother. This feels more permanent somehow, even though it’s not, in all practical senses.

Here we go, then.

(And again, I find myself staring at the cursor on my phone screen, willing myself to write it, to fight the stigma I truly believe shouldn’t exist but to which on some level I still subscribe.)

I have chronic clinical depression. I had a troubled childhood. I’m often anxious in real-world social situations, though I hide it very well. (I told a trusted colleague that one recently and she, in all good humour and meaning no ill will, absolutely did not believe me.)

That was scary. It’s out there now (assuming you’re reading this and I didn’t cop out on publishing). Yikes.

I feel a perhaps irrational need to explain further, so, since I told the #bloggORS crew to write from the heart and this is getting very real now, I shall.

I was diagnosed with depression at fifteen; at the time of writing I’m twenty-seven. In the intervening twelve years I’ve had two weeks off school, one from uni, and one day from work due to the condition. I bear no malice towards people who do need to take time off for their mental wellbeing, and I understand to some extent why that may be necessary, but it’s not what works for me.

At present, I have an absolutely wonderful boss who’s truly understanding and gives me the odd five minutes — not even every day, but over the past month, when I have been quite shaky mentally, maybe two or three times a week — free away from my desk to straighten out my head. That’s what works for me. Maybe another time I’ll write a whole screed about my thoughts on how to support a depressed colleague (or at least my own experiences thereof) but for now, let it be known that my current manager does a bloody good job. He trusts me to know myself, and knows that on the very odd occasions I might need a little more time, say fifteen or twenty minutes to walk around the building and clear my head, that I’ll manage my own workload and make up the time where necessary. It works. I am forever grateful for, and do not for one moment take advantage of, his absolute trust and support.

That’s one reason I want to write. Because I truly, selfishly, egotistically believe that my experiences in this matter may help someone else, when I’m brave enough to be more open and explicit about them.

My relationship with anxiety and my childhood comes under a similar banner. Not only might it be cathartic — particularly on the latter, though I think there are some things I won’t feel comfortable sharing until one, possibly both, parents have shuffled off our mortal coil — but because I’d like to think that my story might help someone else.

(Don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t beaten up as a child, or locked in the cupboard under the stairs. But I did suffer emotional and psychological abuse at the hands of a narcissistic, egomanic and possibly severely depressed parent, and some of that I can’t discuss yet. It took me years to even come to terms with the fact I was an “abuse survivor”, and I still have a very complex relationship with one person, who has done some truly great and some truly terrible things to me, and who I don’t wish to hurt. That makes writing about this matter difficult at best, and some things are impossible to talk about yet.)

Then there’s the whole gender thing.

Still on the topic of “things which might help other people”, there’s the gender thing. For those who don’t know, I’m transgender. Specifically, I’m nonbinary. I’m going to stick the below in header text so it’s really clear:

‘She’ and ‘her’ pronouns make me viscerally uncomfortable. I don’t associate with Western culture’s femininity, nor am I fully male. I respectfully ask my friends, acquaintances and referencers to use a singular ‘they’ pronoun: “they did that”, “that’s their desk”, “they have sent the email” and so forth.

I know it’s a funny thing to get used to, and I don’t bite if you slip up, but please do try. This feels different, in my head, to all of the above. It’s not a matter of when or whether I can talk about it. The simple matter is that I have to, whether I want to or not, over and over again, until the culture in which I live begins to accept that people who are neither male nor female exist and are to be respected.

I’m not the authority on all things nonbinary, and I still have a lot to learn, but I do know my own gender is leaning towards masculine without being actually ‘male’ or ‘female’ as most Western cultures understand the terms. I’m neither and a bit of both. I’m nonbinary — that’s simply the best word I have for it. I’m happy to answer questions on the matter, and I try to challenge prejudices I come across when I feel safe (and compos mentis enough) to do so.

It made my day recently when a very senior individual at my company, in a stand-up meeting attended by almost everyone on site, said that diversity “isn’t just about men and women, but nonbinary people too”. He went on to mention ethnicity, sexuality and a few other characteristics, which is absolutely the correct thing to do in my view, but the fact he mentioned me at all was, to be frank, quite an emotional moment.

I want to write about that because I want every senior person — and every other person — in every business and from every walk of life to casually acknowledge their nonbinary colleagues, friends, neighbours, family members, customers and all else just like that man did, as if it’s no big deal, as if it’s perfectly normal and natural to acknowledge and respect those people. Like it should be.

This really did get heartfelt.

And for all I am honestly a little scared to press ‘publish’, that’s okay. It’s taken me two lunchtimes to write this and, knowing how my brain works, I’ll probably revisit it and tweak the odd word or phrase or try to clarify my thinking over the next few days, but for now, there is it. Why I want to write. And why I’m determined I will.

Watch out for that novel that isn’t, by the way. Someday it’ll be an is.

Comments and thoughts are welcome if you have a moment to spare.