Why am I writing?
Someone recently told me that there wasn’t any point in my
writing down an opinion and sharing it with others if I was saying the same
thing that many other people were saying. We were talking specifically about a
certain opinion I had written about. But he meant opinions about anything. He
was asking me what the point was of writing something down for people to read
if a hundred or a thousand or a million other people had already written the same
thing. Isn’t it redundant, repetitive, pointless, a waste of time and energy?
So why do I write? As we all learned in school, nothing new
is ever written; everything has been written before. So why keep writing? Why
do we keep repeating the words of others with just a slightly different voice,
just a slightly different perspective, just a slant here, a tilt there, to make
it not entirely unoriginal?
The reason I keep writing, and even write things that I know
are already being written and spoken and heard is because, while everything has
already been written, not everybody has already gotten it. Not every person has
read every word that is out there and said, “Ah ha! I get it. I see what they
were saying.” Sometimes a reader reads words and sees nothing; he sees
pointless, empty, fruitless words, and so he tosses those words aside without
absorbing them or digesting them in any way.
But what if that person sees a set of words and tosses it
aside, and then they see another set of similar words and toss that set aside
as well, and continue on and on in the same pattern, until…
Until one writer finds just the right set of words that makes
sense to that reader.
And makes the reader pause.
And think a little longer.
And wonder.
And ask questions.
And maybe those words don’t change the reader’s mind. Maybe
they don’t change the reader’s life. Maybe all they accomplish is to
make that reader pause for just a moment before moving on. But in that
instance, if I am the author of those words, and that reader has a moment of
pause that he has never experienced before with a similar set of words, then I have succeeded. It was well worth the time, the energy, and the thought that I
put into writing my redundant and repetitive set of words and adding them to
all the rest that float through our world.
If I made someone think or laugh or question or smile or
grimace or have any reaction at all by writing something down and sharing it,
then I am serving my purpose as a writer, and I am serving the reader of my
words. This makes me happy. This fulfills me and satisfies me. This is who I
am. This is why I write.
