Writing – Why Bother?

WRITING – WHY BOTHER?

There are so many other interesting things you could be doing: cooking a crêpe Suzette; walking the dog; having sex; quaffing a nice bottle of Balvenie Doublewood.

All perfectly legitimate displacement activities for a writer.

But what is it that impelled Zog to scratch a story on his cave wall? Ptolemaus to scrawl on his papyrus? Catullus to fill in his tabula rasa and Shakespeare to dip his quill?

Psychologists will pontificate gravely on an individual’s motivation for expending so much lonely time on something which may ultimately turn out to be pointless and fruitless.

Maybe you want to make some money, become a celebrity, attract the opposite sex …

Or maybe – in your pre-Copernican solipsism – leave a mark on posterity …

Or maybe there is something intrinsic to the human condition – which we are all in or out of depending on our consumption of mind-altering drugs – which drives a need to connect with our fellow travellers.

It must be the same impulsion that makes some want to act, others to sing arias, to write concertos, tell jokes or design churches.

There is a small homunculus (look it up – writers like to be didactic and enrich their vocabulary!) in many of us pulling levers and throwing switches, telling us to stop watching Deal or no Deal, and get on with building a bridge from our brain to someone else’s imagination and pleasure.

More romantically, you might want to imagine your homunculus as less of a ferocious little monster and more like an inspirational muse.

Whatever. The end result is the same. Get it down on paper or tap it out on the keyboard.

And always, what you are looking for is that response:

‘Your story made me laugh, cry, think, stop, smile, reflect’, maybe all of the above.

It’s that connection with your reader that you crave above all.

I started writing as a callow louche adolescent at school. A surprised acknowledgement from Mr Barton in English was worth ten ticks for successful quadratic equations in maths from Mr Blanks.

Of course, unless you are supremely talented, or lucky or just plain deranged, you temporarily sublimate your urge to write to the need to put food on the table, pay a mortgage or raise your kids.

And yet, if it’s there, it will continue to come back and haunt you like Banquo’s ghost.

But by then, with a better experience of life, you may have lost a little of the fire (feel the burn, baby!) but more than made up for it in a wider understanding of people and life.

And you can develop a facility for turning characters, news items, experiences and anecdotes into something worth more than rubies – the smiling appreciation of a stranger who says:

‘Your story really touched me.’

Remember, too, there is creative reading as well as creative writing.

So if you are like me ­– one of the 80 per cent of people who feel they have a book in them – just … start.

Remember: you fail only if you stop writing.

Let’s leave the last word to the author Ray Bradbury on why writers have to bother:

‘My stories run up and bite me on the leg.

I respond by writing everything that goes on during the bite.

When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.’

Prepare to be bitten …

Guest article by Lindsay Pritchard – author of Harlequinade, published by Richmond Pickering Ltd (ISBN: 978-0-9572372-4-7). Available to order through Amazon or visit the author’s website for further information: http://lindsaypritchardauthor.com