I love to write, that’s a given. In fact, I’d hazard a guess and say most people love to write, be it writing a post on twitter to share their most recent nature pic (of sunsets and sunrises and their dog/cat/other pet doing something of interest to their human owners), to writing a story or two or a line of poetry, to even the day-to-day messages to their work colleagues. Ok, maybe sending emails isn’t that fun, but it can be occasionally entertaining when you find a fox-related-gif. I saw Zootropolis only last week and I find the Nicholas P. Wilde gifs hilariously entertaining. I wish I could pull off a tie… or a hustle for that matter.
But what is it about writing that entices so much? Is it the just that instinct to make yourself heard, like when the wolf bays to the moonlight and echoes the other pack around it?
Or is it deeper than that? Do we write because we want to understand ourselves and the world around us?
I attended the Guildford Book Festival last year and heard an interesting take on writing. One of the writers in the audience said that we write to explain the world around us and our own impressions of it.
When I look further into why we write, I also come across more reasonings. Like George Orwell, for example, who says:
“All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery.”
He even goes on to explain 4 reasons as to why we write.
In part, I sort of understand the reasonings but I don’t agree completely. Yes, maybe I write for the first reason: ‘Sheer Egoism’, and even for the second: ‘Aesthetic Enthusiasm’. I like writing because the words look pretty on the page… and I want someone to remember those pretty, pretty words were written by no other than myself…
No. I think it’s far deeper than that. We write to explain our thoughts and our feelings and why things happen, why things are what they are and why they aren’t, and what ifs and what could’s. It’s a messy world out there beyond the front door, and foxes just the same as humans want to make sense of it.
And in-between the writing what do we do but observe? Watch the world pass by, watch what’s happening and think and ponder, until we can put to words what we’ve seen on the page.
Yes, I love to write. There are so many of us who do, and many of us will find ourselves washed along the tide of words and writers, but we’ll go on writing as long as we know how.
Rusty the Writer Fox 