Why I Write
This evening while working out at the gym, I had an experience which reminds me why I separate myself from the world for days at a time: I witnessed the birth of a story.
One of the most common questions that readers ask writers is, where do we get our ideas from? Really, that’s the wrong question. The world is full of ideas, and unless one is an automaton you can not go through the day without encountering a host of ideas. But ideas do not make stories.
At least for me, the process is one of procreation, akin to having a child. They have to be raised, fed and cared for, sent to school and developed. Maybe they will just want a grade school education and become a story, others will go on to graduate school to do PhD dissertations and become novels. Usually you have a pretty good idea which is which, but they do have minds of their own and sometimes a story surprises you when it demands to go all the way through medical school to become a brain surgeon. But, story or novel, they all start out as a seed in the mind.
So back to the question: how does that seed form? At some point the DNA of multiple ideas unwind and wrap around each other, looking for common points to link up. When they do, a fertile embryo begins to form. Maybe these are chance ideas that randomly come together, and at other times they are planted in vitro by an anthology request.
Many of these potential tales are stillborn, and sometimes if it seemed promising there can be a sort of grieving over the unrealized potential story that just didn’t form right. But then a fertile concept plants itself in the womb of the mind and begins to grow and develop. It may have a short gestation, or it might take as long as an elephant fetus. But eventually, there comes a moment when that potential story emerges from the womb it has been growing in.
I expect that only someone who has given birth, or been present for a birth (as I was for my daughters), can really grasp the mystery of that moment, when a life begins to live on it’s own. But if you have experienced that, perhaps you can appreciate that miraculous instant when one realizes that what had previously been a medley of ideas has suddenly become a living thing. It still needs to be raised and nurtured, and someday hopefully it will find a place to live on its own.
So it was that for a brief moment this evening, I felt that awe and wonder of knowing that a story had been born, something which will grow and develop a life of its own.
And if you can relate to that, you’ll know why I write.