Driven to Write: Part 1: .....Why?

Every time I tell someone that I’m writing a book I get the same two questions: “What’s it about?” and “What made you want to write a book?”  I’ll answer the first question in another post, but today I want to focus on the second question.

I’ve long been a lover of stories, in all the ways they can be presented. Movies, TV shows, books, even verbally, I love them all.  I remember when I was growing up my Mom would tell stories about my siblings and I, about how we would go on fantastic adventures and overcome great challenges.  As we got older and my Mom got busier (being a stay-at-home mom and full-time teacher is no walk in the park), my older sister took over the story telling duties, crafting entertaining stories that were equal parts fantasy and comedy. 

I also had a vivid imagination as a youth; however, at that point in my life I was solely concerned with my role within a story, therefore I had no reason to present my ideas to a wider audience, as my siblings weren’t too keen on hearing about me all day. I was a voracious reader growing up and for many years I would create new adventures with my favorite characters and add myself to the mix. As I got older and I was better able to understand the concept of the setting of a book as a complete world, I become less concerned with adding myself to the story and more involved in creating new stories for story’s sake. I’d come to know the characters as if they were real and It never made sense to me that the story would simply end.  I mean, that’s not how life works!  This is why I have always preferred reading a series of books as opposed to a stand-alone novel.  The disingenuousness of the idea that I would only be interested in a cross-sectional perspective of a character’s life was irritating, although as I got older I began to appreciate stand-alone stories for what they were. 

Throughout this time, as I went from high school to college, I still continued to make up stories, some based on dreams; others based on things I’d seen or read.  But I usually never mulled over a single story for more than a two week period before I moved on to the next one. But then, one day, something changed.  It was the middle of the night and I was contemplating an idea for a story. As I was thinking about it, I realized that this was not a story of the stand-alone model, a thought provoking isolated event with a clear beginning, middle, and end. No, this was a story in the mythic sense of the word.  There was history and context, past events playing a pivotal role in the present, and a present that relentlessly moved towards the future.  I wasn’t telling a story, I was creating a world (I mean world in the alternate reality sense of the word, not the physical sense).

“So, you want to write a novel? Great! Writing a novel is a worthwhile goal. It’ll challenge you, stretch you, and change you.  Getting it published will gain you respect from your family and friends, and it may even earn you a bit of fame and money. But respect fame, and money aren’t the only reasons for writing a novel. The only reason you need to give for writing a novel is that you want to write a novel. Don’t let anyone one bully you by demanding some better reason; there isn’t one.”

This was the very first thing I read when I opened my most recent birthday present, “Writing Fiction for Dummies”.  In many ways, this small statement sums up two years’ worth of thoughts and observations about writing a book.  I’d being lying if I said that I’d never thought about the financial benefits of being a successful author or of doing a reading at a public venue.  But neither of those thoughts were there at the beginning, when, as I was lying in the bed one night, I decided to grab the most recent of a myriad of ideas that had ventured through my head and transform it from idea into reality.  I suppose I would sum up my feelings like this: I’m not simply writing a book because I have a story to tell, I’m writing a book, this book, because like with all stories that pique my curiosity, I want to know what happens, I want to know how it ends.