Yet another “Why Do I Write” essay
If you want to write, but aren't sure how to, I'll help you tell your stories.
I came across the Twenty Best Essays On Writing. As I went over them one by one, I found some practical advice, but what stood out to me was the self-importance, the mutual admiration, the feeling of being so unique and interesting. Usually you read each of these essays in isolation, and it doesn’t really hit you that hard, but seeing twenty of them in a row makes certain patterns clear.
Why do we never come across essays like “Why Do I Write Code In Java” or “Why I Like Selling Cars”, or even “Why I Make YouTube Videos Reviewing Books”? How come my mother has gone so long without an essay that says “Why I Spend Two Hours Picking Jasmine And Then Weaving Them Into A Garland That Fades In A Day”? Why does writing need to be justified so much in a way that other hobbies and professions don’t care for?
I guess it’s just a function of how people express themselves? Writers write, and they tend to also write about writing, because after a certain point, writing is most of their life.
But given the level of self-importance this genre oozes, it kind of feels like yet another American Baby Boomer artifice that has since become tradition. There’s this profound lack of self-awareness. They don’t seem to be able to view themselves in the context of the world around them. They have an inflated sense of self-worth, while also somehow having really low self-esteem. Maybe the self-worth comes from calling oneself a writer, and the low self-esteem and self-flagellation from everything else.
I thought I’d write about the same topic, but honestly, this time. I don’t think writing makes me better than anyone at anything. There’s people who don’t write who have better mastery of language, who are much more observant and have great insights on people, and heck, there’s plenty of non-writers who tell great stories. And there’s plenty of writers who, thanks to social media finally, we know aren’t really better at having perspectives about the world than the rest of us.
So then, why do they write? Why do I write?
Why I Write
Apparently girls learn reading skills faster than boys at the age when reading skills are learned. They say that little advantage of possibly a few months gives girls a huge boost and encouragement in pursuing reading and writing. I don’t know how strong the evidence is for this.
But I did learn to read before I went to school, because my grandpa made it fun. So I was cocky about being able to read a-p-p-l-e, lauded by teachers for being so, and it made up for my lack of skill in catching a ball. That became my identity, just like one of my friends had her identity become her beautiful handwriting, and another that he knew medical terms when he was four (because his parents were an ophthalmologist and gynaecologist, words that he said without stumbling even a little. He is now an otolaryngologist.)
Even though I barely wrote, and mostly read all through school, somehow ‘a writer’ was part of my identity. I don’t know how that happened. Maybe it was occasional entries into essay writing contests? I have no idea.
When you have that kind of a familiar idea about yourself and your identity for so long, you do try writing in the style of things you read. And hence I kept at it over the years. I don’t know if I was honing my skills or anything, and I don’t know if writing nonfiction really helps me write fiction. My suspicion is that it doesn’t.
So, yeah, that’s why I write. Because a long long time ago in a land far, far away, a few people thought I knew big words, and hence ought to be a writer. No one cared enough to disagree. That became part of my identity. The End.
Who Is Not A Writer?
I used to judge writers like Amish Tripathi, who said in interviews that “they didn’t like reading and writing” and then went on to become successful novelists. Somehow if someone wasn’t groomed in the old ideas about how to be a writer, or schooled with ‘the classics’, they weren’t a ‘real writer’. That line of thought I know now belongs in the dumpster.
I feel entitled to call myself a writer because somehow that’s part of my identity for reasons beyond my control. My reality check came when a friend of mine who told the most fun stories and read a lot of books told me he felt like writing down his stories, but that he wasn’t able to have a flow of words going in writing, and he didn’t think in English, which made it hard to express complex ideas.
That’s all was my edge - knowing a language a little bit better. That’s all kept me feeling like I was a writer, and that’s all kept him feeling like he could never be one. Just knowing the words that were acceptable to publications. At that point, both of us had the same number of articles and stories published - zero. And yet, I was the writer. He wasn’t. Isn’t that such nonsense?
That said, some people just don’t like reading and writing. My parents never read fiction. They encouraged me to, but they just preferred reading nonfiction I found boring until I was twenty-five. My sister reads fiction, but couldn’t care less about reading as a medium. She much prefers to wait for the movie than read the book. Many people I know, especially men, don’t like to read. They devour audiobooks and podcasts, though. And they’ll talk your head off about movies and how they are structured. But read a book? They’ll want to, but then just never do it.
Do they love stories any less? Or are they any worse at telling stories? My experience says no.
When I’d read the creative nonfiction of a writer who wasn’t particularly skilled with words, I’d cringe. Or novels whose authors clearly were trying to write a Bollywood movie, but a novel was more accessible. But people lapped them up! I was wrong. They were right. Those stories were valuable, and resonated with a lot of people, clearly.
Meanwhile, there’s debut novels from authors fresh out of an MFA program, which were given high six figure advances, and managed only three stars on Amazon and Goodreads.
Why Do We Write?
Probably for the same reason my mother would take time off her day to water the plants, pick the tiny little jasmine flowers, and weave them into a garland, which would be wilted by the following morning. She thinks it’s a beautiful thing to do. She takes such pride in having woven a perfect and tight row of flowers, and in sharing bits of it with our neighbors, and offering them to the deities. And it is a most lovely thing that adds a dab of joy into everyone’s day.
Some people write for the same reason the flower seller outside the temple would weave flowers into a basketful of garlands. It’s delightful and beautifully devotional, yes, but this lady saved enough from doing it for thirty years that she and her son could afford to buy a house and rent it out to film crews, and they also financed a movie with the flower money. At some point, for some period, the dab of joy and the devotion wasn’t the main reason to do it.
People write to put forth their ideas into the world, and one of my big gripes about all the reading I did while growing up was that the gatekeepers who curated what I was reading didn’t give an equal opportunity to all voices, and even hid the fact that there were voiceless people who I wasn’t hearing from. I don’t mean my parents; they let me read everything. It was publishers, journalists, editors, TV channels, and essentially the whole media. For someone like me who got their ideas of the world from books, magazines and newspapers, this was a giant loss. I am glad to be correcting it to some extent as an adult.
Everyone has a story in them. You don’t need to be a ‘writer’ in the sense of the people who wrote those 20 essays in order to tell those stories. I’m tired of the narratives that promote this sort of gatekeeping.
If you have a story in you, and aren’t sure how to tell it, or aren’t sure if you should, just get in touch with me. I’ll help you tell it.