Why Do I Write?

Last updated: Tagged in: personal, writing Categorised in: Blog

Contrary to the beliefs of the people who send me emails and Tweets, I am not the David Brooks of the New York Times. That is to say, a professional writer.

But I write anyway.

I have always loved writing. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t write in one way or another. I “published” my first book somewhere around age 5. It was a real gem; let me tell you.

Sure, wedged in-between the free-writing, there have been times when I wrote for a grade. While that helped me hone my skills at communication, that’s not what I care to write.

Like most of my friends, my main influences were Tolkien, Lewis, Weis, and Hickman. I wrote the stories of the characters in the games I played, and I kept it secret. I was a nerd, and that wasn’t okay with most people.

But I wrote anyway.

Today, if I were to read back through the things I wrote, I’d likely set the whole pile ablaze. But the concepts were things that needed a voice at the time. I wanted to tell a story. I have always loved a good story. (I kid you not, in college I was “David Brooks, the guy with a story for everything.”)

So here I am, at age thirty-something. Last year I “finished” the story that I first penned back in 1996 or so. It was rubbish then, but in the rock tumbler of my brain, it bounced around until it was something I was proud to mention. Not to everyone, of course. Some people still didn’t get the whole “fantasy nerd” thing.

(Edit: it’s 2020 now, and some people still don’t. That’s okay. I don’t like many sports, for example.)

The goal was never to write a fantasy book. It was to write about these characters who happened to be in that setting. Plus, swords and magic are cool, right?

Two years after I picked the story back up, it’s in editing. I’m editing it. At least for now. While I call it “finished”, it’s anything but “finished”. (I think I added a thousand words to chapter one in the last revision. It was light.)

So here, I also started a blog. It’ll be a place I write (mostly to myself) about what I’m doing, what I’m thinking, and the things I’m learning. It may not be in line with what they would tell you in school, but that’s fine. I write, anyway.