Why I Write
Excerpt from “Why Knot?” Buy the book at Amazon
1
When asked as a child whether I would like to become a doctor since doctors save lives, I replied that we all die; doctors just postpone that. What matters is to have a reason for living. I wanted to become an author because authors can help people realize what they can and should do with their lives.
2
How could Shakespeare have written so well about the murder of kings? Was that how he thought? Should Queen Elizabeth have considered him a threat?
Dostoyevsky read a newspaper story about a murder and imaginatively understood how such a person might think and why such a person might do such things. He could hear in his head how such a person might speak and justify himself. Without ever having acted in such a way, he could write Crime and Punishment.
The capacity for understanding people who are very different from ourselves allows authors to write and readers to enjoy such stories and allows actors to portray many different kinds of characters.
Thanks to this ability writers, readers, and actors experience multiple lives — not just the one that they live. And the insight and empathy gained from those vicarious experiences makes their actual experience of life richer and more complete, bringing them closer to the people they know and love, because they can more fully appreciate what others are feeling and thinking. That’s the primary reason why I write.
Regardless of whether characters in some way resemble me or people I have known, what matters to me is the experience of creating characters who come alive in my imagination such that I can hear them speak and see them act in ways that I would not have expected.
3
Stories are born, not made. Some characters and plots come to life and grow and change. Others remain static.
For an author, the experience of bringing a character to life is similar to becoming fluent in a foreign language. When you immerse yourself in a language, you can reach a point when you start to dream in it. And when you develop your characters to a critical point, you start to dream what they say and what they do. You hear their words and see their action, and the story takes on a life of its own.
3
I write and read fiction for the enriching experience of living many times.
Only in the worst novels do the authors control and manipulate their characters.
Rather characters come alive and determine their own destiny, despite the author’s well-meaning plans for them.
Writing such a book is a delightful adventure of discovery.
6
When I create characters and scenes, I am performing thought-experiments, a la Einstein. If I put these characters together under these circumstances, what is likely to happen and why and how does that affect my notions of human nature and destiny. That is why I write and enjoy writing, regardless of whether I ever have an audience.
7
The novels I write are memoirs of lives I haven’t lived yet.
8
Many people write because they enjoy the experience of writing, the sense of accomplishment they get from finishing a novel, the insights that gives them.
Many people run marathons and enjoy doing so even though they have no expectation of ever winning.
I’m reminded of a book by Jane Smiley 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel which provides lots of helpful advice about the process of writing novels, and conveys much of the pleasure of just doing it.
It’s great if you have the temperament and the time to both write and market. But for many the marketing is a bridge too far.
