Why I Write

There’s been a proliferation of interesting writing on the topic of Why We Blog this week. Ronna addressed it, focusing on three main points: that blogging is a way to get outside ourselves, is therapeutic, and is a way to tell our stories. She asserted, and I agree, that we all have myriad stories to tell. She hinted that in this telling we are both ourselves enriched and, possibly, privileged to participate in the growth of others. Ronna included an Isak Dinesen quote I love: To be a person is to have a story to tell.

She followed up this post with a second, the next day, about the way that “blogging is a way to create and experience community.” I very much agree with this point, which echoed Aidan’s thoughtful observations on why she blogs. I share the sentiment that blogging is a way to meet (and be met by) people whose lives and stories are very different from our own. I am sometimes keenly aware of the general homogeneity of my life. I love my life, of course, but I do have a certain restlessness of the spirit that is slaked, in part, by learning about people whose lives and choices are very different from my own.

So I’ve been thinking this weekend about Why I Blog. I know I feel a visceral impulse to share the stories of my life, both the mundane ones and the meaningful ones. I know that writing often helps me put shape around my nascent or amorphous thoughts, helps me understand the underlying current beneath a riptide of emotion. Joan Didion put it best: “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.”

But there’s another, impossible to ignore, reason why I blog. After all, blogging both assumes and actively seeks an audience. Obviously I need, on some level, to know that someone is reading my words. I think this is a reflection of the basic human need to be truly seen. But is it exhibitionistic? Does it make the thoughts and content less meaningful? Is it the wrong thing, to want someone to be reading? I have thought about this a lot, struggling with the initial feeling that it is immature and needy of me to need someone to be out there reading me. On some level this is just a continuation of a pattern of needing to be validated and approved by the big bad world out there, isn’t it?

I think it is that, yes. But I think it is more than that too. I imagine that most writers write for an audience, whether it’s an audience of one (perhaps Steven King’s Ideal Reader) or millions. I cannot in good conscience claim the title of “writer” for myself, but I know that one reason I blog is because I hope to, someday, provide for someone else that shimmering sigh of recognition that some writing I’ve read has given me. That bone-deep sense of being not alone when someone else can put into words thoughts or feelings that have swarmed incoherently around my head and heart. If I can, someday, give a single reader that feeling that I have had so many times in my years of blog-reading, then I will be happy. It feels arrogant to even wish for that, but in truth, I do. I am personally sustained by those moments when someone else’s writing makes my heart physically swell with identification and awareness, and I aspire to provide that for someone else.

For me, more than the community, more than the catharsis, more than the story-telling, it’s about that. About that feeling of recognition, that single moment when you read a sentence or a paragraph and suddenly understand something you’ve known all along in a new way. Which, when I think about it, is sort of an amalgam of community, catharsis, and story-telling. I’ve been blessed to be on the receiving end of that feeling many times, and I continue to hope that I might provide it for someone out there.

To illustrate my point, here is one such passage – a paragraph that made me shiver because it put into such beautiful words something I’ve thought before. A paragraph that happens to be ABOUT that feeling. (oh so very meta).

Have you ever looked at, say, a picture or a great building or read a paragraph in a book and felt the world suddenly expand and, at the same instant, contract and harden into a kernel of perfect purity?
– Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries

Yes, I have. And I did just there. And that’s why I write.

(And no, I am not arrogantly comparing myself to one of the great writers of the last few decades. No. I come up to Carol Shields’ ankle. But she inspires me.)

7 thoughts on “Why I Write”

  1. Wonderful, thoughtful post. (And, no, not because you linked to me 🙂 ) I disagree with you on one point though.

    You are a writer. An exquisite one. I imagine that you will provide that "shimmering sigh of recognition" for many down the line. You do, almost on a daily basis, for me. And quite a few others, I imagine.

    Feel free to keep asking as long as you promise to keep writing.

  2. What a beautiful post. And you just accomplished what it is you hope to do – expand someone's world.

    C.S. Lewis said "We read to know we're not alone". It would seem only natural that writer's would write for the same reason.

    My former 'about' page on my old photography site once talked about how it's *all* about connection.

    As for being needy….no. I don't think it's needy or immature. In fact, feedback is considered one of the components necessary to creating meaning. It's natural, and it's uplifting, to know that you've connected with someone and affected their lives in a positive way. As you just did mine.

    Thanks for such a great post.
    All the best!
    deb

  3. This is beautiful. I agree completely. And you know what? You totally *did* just articulate something I feel and think, but hadn’t ever actually put into words.

    What you say about how it feels to come across a piece of writing that resonates with you reminds me of what Stephen King says about a good simile in “On Writing” – it’s like recognizing an old friend in a room full of strangers.

    (here via Motherese. I don’t follow the comment link trail too often, but when I do I always discover a new gem.) 🙂

  4. I am so glad I read this post! You took the words right out of my heart!

    It is more than the therapy of writing it down to find out what I’m thinking. To know that someone “out there” might benefit from my words is so uplifting; so inspiring to me. I feel less alone and “weird” because someone else can relate to what I am saying or going through the same things.

    I have wondered if it is selfish to want people to read my simple (and definitely, rambling) words.

    And I agree with Aidan, you are a writer. A beautiful writer! I am eager for more!

  5. I am here via Danielle LaPorte….for me your writing is luminous…my fav color… and reflects a great awareness. I am inspired reading your words. I suspect that the need to be read arises from your beautiful search for meaning! Much Love! Thank you!

  6. Hi.
    Am a lil late here but I had to say it. Your writing is beautiful. So clear and touching. And the most important thing, you are giving me, that moment. When the world shrinks and expands and something new enters our psyche to be a part of us, to lead us, to make us feel like we belong and above all else to give us that moment of purity. Thank u and god bless

  7. Thanks for sharing this kernel of perfect purity with us. For the record, you CAN write. I also question where this impulse to put fingers to keyboard comes from, and why so many people these days seem to have this very same impulse. Regardless of its origins, I can only see the positives for both sides of the spectrum: readers and writers. Keep up the good work, and stop by sometime. I can’t promise Carol Shields, but you might titter a little, and that’s good enough for me 😀

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