Why I Write

October 20th is the National Day on Writing and this year to celebrate the day people all over the country are answering one question:

Why do I write?

It's a seemingly simple question, but it's been knocking around in my brain for weeks and try as I might, I can't come up with just one succinct answer.  Then it hit me today, I can't come up with a succinct and solitary answer because that tricky monkey is actually several questions hiding behind one sentence.

Why do I write?

I could just as easily spend my time riding my bike, reading, or watching How I Met Your Mother until I laugh so hard that one more chuckle will send me into tears.  I enjoy all of these things, but not like writing.

I have to write.

Words are air and if I don't inhale and exhale them, I will die.  You think I'm being melodramatic and maybe I am, but when I'm prohibited from writing, my joy for life begins to dwindle.  Everything dulls into gray.

image courtesy of mylifeonamac.com

I have a harder time solving problems in the non-writerly parts of my life when I'm not tapping out ideas on the keyboard.

I'm horrible at sleeping through the night as it is, but when I'm not writing, I can just forget about sleeping.  When I stop writing, my creative brain stops breathing.  Then my nocturnal brain senses impending death and begins CPR in the form of stacks and stacks of insane dreams every night.

I write because writing is life.

Why do I write?

I believe everyone has a story.  A beautiful, funny, heartbreaking, fascinating story.  You do.  No really, you do.  And it turns out I do, too.

I write because I'm the story of the unconventional athlete.

I'm the story of the girl who once had to cut herself out of a dress.

I'm the story of the teacher who loves children with reckless abandon and stands up for what is just.

I'm the story of the wife who fought for her husband when he couldn't.

I'm the story of the woman who battles cancer, with a bicycle as my unlikely weapon.

I'm the story of the girl who can only clot the grief of losing my grandmother by writing letters she'll never read.

I'm the story.  And guess what?  You are, too.

Why do I write?

There's something to be said for all those stories, but for some great orators they can be just as easily and just as well told orally.  I am not one of those great orators.  I never will be.  I have a pesky lisp that crops up when I'm nervous.  When I speak in front of people, I sweat so much that I create my own water cycle.  I stumble over words and stammer over syllables.

But not when I'm writing.

When I write, I can write and revise until the words feel right in my mouth.  The delete key is a beautiful, beautiful thing.  Oh Lord, what I wouldn't give for a delete button in some conversations I've had.  It would have come in really handy when I was interviewing for a job and accidentally called the interviewer bi*ch.  I digress.

The point is that when I write, I'm a better version of myself.  A more honest version.  A more thoughtful version.  The version I try to be, both on the paper and off.

Your turn.  Why do you write?