Why do you write?

Andrew Wilson  
Why do you write? What started you writing? Tell the truth and shame the devil, was it hope for money? Desiring adoration in the form of celebrity? Perhaps even just peer approval?

My first foray into writing, I was twelve- or thirteen-years old attending Killinarden Community School, in Tallaght, Southwest Dublin, Ireland. My school is located on the periphery of the estate, sandwiched between our own and an estate called Jobstown. Appropriate name for the housing scheme, because like the Biblical Job, to say life felt challenging is grossly inadequate. Life felt like being smote by the Lord. These estates (and the others comprising the mass of west Tallaght) were rife with domestic violence fuelled by alcoholism, joyriding in stolen cars to escape the dysfunction at home and later heroin addiction acquired when eventually sentenced to prison for engaging in such activities.

In K.C.S not much was hoped for the students. The most expected of us, that we completed the minimum under law education requirements before the girls carried their first pregnancy, the boys received their first custodial sentence to young offenders institution. That was to sit the Junior Certificate at fourteen, after that your parents (or parent) would not be harassed by the state should you drop out. One of the punishments in K.C.S for misbehaviour, was to write out by hand multiple times the school rules found in your journal. Teachers decided how many sets of rules you had to write depending on their judgment regarding the severity of your disruption to class. There was one teacher who never gave the school rules as punishment. Mr. Reynold’s preferred instead to assign short stories of between 500-1000 words on, “Life inside a golf ball. Summer as a blade of grass on lawnmower day. Life as a chewing gum etc.”   My classmates hated Mr. Reynold’s, begging to be sanctioned with the rules instead of his stories. I didn’t, I found his stories quite easy, even sometimes enjoyable.

Like a lot of boys, soon as my Junior Certificate was completed, I dropped out and would not interface with education or writing again for a decade, until sentenced to four years in prison for drug dealing. There’s much to write about prison, but I won’t go into it here, sufficient to say it’s a binary sink or swim environment. Prisoners call serving a sentence, “Doing your whack.”

If you dare to mutter complaint about your sentence in the presence of other prisoners, you’ll be swiftly told, “Do your whack, man!”

What’s that? You’re climbing the walls going through withdrawals banging on the door for a medic?

“DO YOUR FUCKIN’ WHACK, MAN!” Will be the chorus reverberating around the wing scolding you.

How I did my whack, was going the gym five days a week for that prison sculpted body and attending school. One day during class for the composition module to complete my high school English education. I had to pick from a selection of topics / prompts to write short stories and essays. My English teacher read them wide eyed while cheerily declaring, “You’re a creative writer! We have a creative writing class; may I enrol you?”

I shrugged, “Yeah sure, why not.”

A few days later, I was sat in my cell writing my first ever serious attempt at a short story that wasn’t foisted upon me as punishment by Mr. Reynold’s, “The Spirit of Pharmakeia.”

As someone with a checkered history of substance abuse, I can say with confidence, writing is a true buzz. It’s not just a natural high, there’s a spiritual component. Sometimes I was scribbling away on notepad, needing to stop and get up to pace the cell chain smoking to help dissipate bubbling energy, frequently awe struck. Where are these words even coming from? It wasn’t all gravy. I felt like there was not so much an expiration date, but a deadline. If I procrastinated on an idea too long, a certain uncomfortable compulsion built to the point I was compelled to write and if I took too long before beginning, then frequently the writing felt eerily like an exorcism, and I was vomiting the words onto the page desperately racing to get the first draft done so I could begin revising and feel relief.

Thankfully, movements through space which we measure using time are constant and I was eventually released. Determined not to return to crime for reasons I won’t go into in this post, I somehow got the idea in my head, “Hang on, I have these short stories from prison. I have the experience of serving a sentence and all the madness that came along with it. Why not combine them? A combination of memoir and anthology makes for a book.”

Thus began the writing of my first book. Once complete, with uncontrollable eager optimism I submitted the manuscript to various publishers for their consideration. Months passed; nothing and I mean not even crickets. Oh well never mind, the good Lord loves a chancer and helps those who help themselves, does he not? I’ll just try again.  So, I started writing a novel  When the manuscript was complete, I sent it off to even more publishers and agents than the time previous. Obviously, the good Lord was just testing my fortitude and resolve, building character and all that. The novel will be picked up, published, sell a bunch, then there’ll be demand for my memoir / anthology. Months passed, actually got some rejection e-mails. A publisher and agent bothered to take the time to write that they were passing on it. Oh well, that’s progress at least, isn’t it? I mean obstacles are there to keep out the unworthy, are they not? Okay, no more prickin’ about. It’s time to get serious. I’m going to write something from the primordial deep within and I’m not holding back. I’m shaving my head, I’m fasting, I’m growing a beard and I’m rolling up my sleeves, putting everything and I do mean everything into this next work. I’m going to fuckin’ war, son.

That’s precisely what I did. You’ve no doubt heard of “method acting,” well now it was time for method writing. So, I ventured inside myself and bore my soul. When the manuscript was complete, for the third time I submitted it to the usual gatekeepers. The rejections came prompt this time, more than I can count from the top of my head. Then they arrived, e-mail from an agent, another from one of the bigger publishers in my country. The agent stressed that she enjoyed it, but it’s so hard to get a book across the line these days that she thinks it falls just short. The e-mail from the publisher said, “While we read your work with interest, we just don’t feel it’s the right fit for [redacted], however, please don’t be discouraged. It might be possible that another publisher will be interested in your work.”

Like Job in the Bible, I felt complete desolation. I wanted to just sit naked wallowing in my grief. Some people might take encouragement, seeing progress but consider the following. Most people who lived in the past, currently living and will live in the future, never give a single goal their total all and fail, it’s an agony known too very few. They never hit the ceiling of their potential, so it remains potential. Whereas those who dare to try and fail, hitting that ceiling, it’s no longer potential. Such is the case for those who attempt with all their might, realizing you’ve been weighed and measured. You know your potential because your face crashed into the ceiling of its limits, there’s no longer fantasy estimations regarding your calibre to hide behind soothing, you stepped into the ring and found out.

So, what did I do? I stopped writing. I wish I could say that was all there was to it, but it wasn’t. What once was my private sanctuary that got me through prison, became tainted. It was no longer a buzz, becoming about chasing a deal like I’ve chased so many drugs in my life. I was grief stricken. I’d never had a hobby I enjoyed my entire life and when I finally got one, instead of doing what any sane person who discovers treasure does, hiding keeping it to himself, I fucked it up by trying to sell it. Who tries to sell treasure? Fools who know prices but not values, that’s whom.  I was the biggest fool of them all.

A couple of years passed, wounded I wandered through a personal desert without oasis. I tried to keep it out of my head, but it would persist pestering me. Gnawing away at me, eventually as if I was about to embark on a secret sordid affair with a married old flame, I agreed to one more dalliance on the condition I didn’t submit it anywhere, it was just for me. I wrote a novella in private. I was so happy I uploaded it to Draft2Digital, just to get the single paperback copy for myself. Words fail to convey the joy I felt holding it. I remembered that familiar feeling, I knew it many times in prison. I was transported back to writing in my cell, sure it’s a buzz, but there’s also mystery. WHERE DO THE WORDS COME FROM?  I was back writing, but not repeating my mistake. I wrote for the sheer fuck of it. 

19+ Comments

Luluo

I wrote for the sheer fuck of it.

YES.
Our life stories are entirely different—almost opposites. But when it comes down to it, I too—despite the rejections, the work, the blood, sweat, and tears—write for the sheer fuck of it.

Oct-16 2023

Frannyglas

BeCaUsE I LiKe It. :rage:

Oct-16 2023

Slimsim

I started by accident, never thought I would still have one more career in me . I am writing because I want in my own little way make known to those interested , what I was surprised to discover at my young age of 73. I enjoy writing since then, but I have so many emotional mental blocks that I cannot write for days. I wish I was doing something like fantasy, or romance gene. Too late to start that, must try and finish and climb my Everest, and I am still at base camp. The whole mountain stays before me… I have sent out lots of SOS’s :smiling_face: :sleepy:

Oct-16 2023

Jacksavage

what the fuck else is there to do in a mental asylum all day?

Oct-16 2023

Ronoz

Bloody hell, fancy writing with a crayon.

Oct-16 2023

Mavalot

Your story is powerful, and the passion in your voice is undeniable. You have already succeeded where so many fail. Everything else is gravy.

Oct-16 2023

Jacksavage

Lol, imagine scribbling your story on the walls, Ron.

My story is daubed in my own shit. This could get messy.

Oct-16 2023

Ronoz

Ah, with the brown stuff. Some kind of erotic story.

I should delete this.

Oct-16 2023

Jacksavage

That thinking was far too alike for my liking.

Oct-16 2023

Jacksavage

You are known for peculiar eroticism in your stories.

And you draw the line at this? I dunno.

Oct-16 2023

Ronoz

You’re tempting me to make a comeback.

Oct-16 2023

Jacksavage

You should!

But Temperance Tation is a fickle mistress. She always offers tantalising new things. Choose Persephone Verance over her, every time. She’s less exciing, but offers stabilty, and guides you to finish the story in front of you.

Oct-16 2023

Alexkuiper

To express my mental health struggles in a healthy way. When I’m upset or otherwise struggling, I write. Or at least, I daydream about the story, which sometimes produces interesting ideas (or just for fun, daydreaming stories is fun). A lot of the story’s content is based on my experiences with autism, having few friends, etc. The antagonist and protagonist are like two sides of myself, sharing traits with me, and the other characters are like pieces of me as well.

And because if I don’t write, how else am I going to get my story out there? Whether people read it or not, and whether it’s successful or not (both of which are unlikely from what I’ve heard), I don’t want it to remain unwritten. Better to try than to not, which guarantees it won’t get read. Even if it ends up just being read and shared by friends and family, I will consider it a success.

Oct-16 2023

Jacksavage

My father always banged on about writing a book one day. He never did. But then he was either the smartest dumb person or the dumbest smart person I ever met. He could see through the world’s horseshit from a thousand yards, even in a time of great devoutness and overwhelming views to the contrary and yet could be as thick as a ditch, with the social skills of a lamppost. Still not sure, smart-dumb or dumb-smart, but I take after him in that.

When I was seven or eight, I told him if he wasnt going to write one, I would. I read everything I could get my hands on until the day he died. Then, I spiralled. Lost interest in reading, life, friends, love, science, God, religion. None of it mattered.

So, here I am. Past the signposts to salvation. Destination: hell, with no fucks given. Until then, single bloody mindedness until I fulfill my childhood promise.

My author name is the fish and chip shop my Dad used to take me to when I was a kid.

Sure, financial gain would be nice, but the one piece of advice my dad gave me still holds relevance: Don’t kid yourself

If he were here I’d tell him; I’m not. I set out to write a book. I am not so far from achieving my goal. Next time I will shift the goalposts, and hit them too. Cos Mam’s advice holds strong too: where there is a will, there is a way.
But I’ve always know that. My battle is with my will. Beyond that, it’s child’s play.

Oct-16 2023

Litty

Because I’ve run out of things to read.

Oct-16 2023

Rxd01

image
:grin:

Oct-16 2023

Glitterpen

I love the act of creative expression. I have a ton of creative energy that I need to unleash into the world. I like the different stages of writing a book. Also, “writing a novel” ended up on my bucket list (someone told me they thought I’d be good at it), so I had no choice but to try it. :slight_smile:

Just realized the question is from a blog post. I’ll go and read it soon.

Oct-16 2023

Andy_jacob

This is an interesting sort of a confession. Though I rarely read autobiographies (that is almost never), I feel like this would be a much more interesting read than reading about morons like Harry and Megan or Kim.

Oct-16 2023

Glitterpen

@Aindreas I’m really happy for you that you found a life-line with writing, and that you didn’t give up the hobby altogether. It’s a fantastic hobby. Our creations are amazing, flaws and all.

Most people who lived in the past, currently living and will live in the future, never give a single goal their total all and fail, it’s an agony known too very few.

I’m not trying to pick a fight or anything, but I actually think this is very common. I know what it’s like to live and breathe something only to find out my absolute best isn’t good enough. I’ve failed at many things. Sometimes my best wasn’t enough, and sometimes health issues interfered.

I think this problem is what makes videogames so attractive. We play them, and in many of these games, our skills build with each new level. In reality, this doesn’t happen so consistently, as an upward process. In reality, other people may be better and take our spot in the “game” of life, leaving us stuck at the same low paying job, etc. I’m not sure why real life isn’t easier. Still, it’s good to strive for excellence.

Oct-16 2023
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