I’ve thought a lot about this: why we write. Lord knows, there are easier ways to spend your day.
One of the dirty truths about writing is that it’s a hell of a lot of work. No matter what offerings I make (and there have been many), the words refuse to write themselves. They are selfish and lazy little bastards.
To be entirely honest, there are plenty of times I want to walk away and do almost anything other than write, but for some reason, I don’t. And a lot of my writer friends don’t either. Time after time, we find ourselves drawn back to the desk or the laptop or the pen and paper so we can hash out the things that are banging around inside our head.
Now you might be saying to yourself, “Wow, Larry. That sounds like a stubborn group of people who really have a thing for emotional agony.” I wouldn’t disagree with you. But I also admit that I proudly count myself among their numbers, and I think the answer to why we keep at this writing thing goes deeper than our being a collection of people whose particular kink is self-induced frustration.