Why I Write

Before I start writing about why I write I would like to add a little poem about the beauty of the blank page that dauntingly stares most writers in the face:

It takes an empty page
To tell what cannot be told
It takes an empty heart
To fill that we can never hold
Love.

That tiny spectre of creative thought came to me while scribbling away in my writers journal madly trying to catch up with half a weeks worth of unfilled pages. It was there that I suddenly realised one of the reasons (perhaps the most important reason) as to why I write, and perhaps why many writers out ‘there’ write. It helps me understand me. I know this probably doesn’t sound like much to you or even make sense but since I felt the warm embrace of conscious thought at the age of 3 years, I’ve been striving (at times struggling) to understand why I am who I am and writing seems to me the quickest path to understanding myself.
It has the effect of trapping my random conscious thoughts down on paper and ensuring their existence in our world. I also see it as a means to travel between two dimensions, i.e. the one in my head (some call it the sub conscious) and the one outside my head (some call it reality). Without this little free travel pass to my inner thoughts, (for my thoughts fade quickly) I would be confined to travels in another person’s mind, so in that sense I am a fairly self-centred person.


Another reason as to why I write would have to be the window parable:

There was a young man with a broken window,
When he spoke to the glazier and asked him to fix it,
The glazier told him it would cost 100 dollars,
The young man sighed ‘I can’t afford that’,

The young man asked other glaziers how much it would cost,
They all quoted him the same price,
The young man was upset ‘what shall I do?’,

He then asked his grandfather what to do,
His grandfather then replied,
‘Leave the window, let people see into your world’,

The young man took his advice,
He then opened all the curtains in his house.

I guess I can sum that up by saying that sometimes in life we need to be seen by others (unless you wish to live as a hermit) and writing is just one of the many ways to be seen or heard. It is the quintessential vice of the egoist, to be seen, and in many ways we as writers (published or unpublished) are egoists in our own rights. We all need the pat on the back and words of encouragement, be it from friends or (if your lucky, and I’m not!) from your teacher. It’s the encouragement and approval that keeps most writers writing, unless you’re stubborn like me! I believe that without this encouragement most writers die by their pens. So it is with the outside acknowledgement that a writer asserts himself in his craft and in part asserts his own existence.

How oft often a poet writes what men comprehend lest,
How oft often we question not the constrains we jest,
How lest remarkable we find ourselves in rest,
How lest poetically we quest.

Poetry, my songbird, without which I would not survive. Poetry is the reason I began writing and now we come to the crux of why I write and what I write a majority of. Poetry is also the reason I will stop writing one day, it is where my writing reaches a vulnerability to the critique of my peers. It’s the art that I take most seriously and to have that art dissected and disseminated will most likely crush me.
Poetry has always been a fairly private affair to me and outside of my closest friends none have read my poems and if I’m lucky the critics in this world (by and large) will never get their grubby hands on them.
I think one of the reasons that I feel vulnerable about my poetry is because of its very openness to interpretation, you can read almost anything from a poem, its meaning clouded in a shroud of mostly obscure words.


Whispers in the wind
Leaves rustle
Their struggle unending
Against sky
A backdrop of malevolence
Whispers heard
Like spies on high towers
They watch
Like ancient assassins
Leaves rustle.


The main aspect of poetry and writing in my belief is the trust between writer and reader, the trust that the reader believes the writer and the trust that the writer expects the reader not to hate their work. It’s with this trust that the writer feels a certain comfort to write and continue to write. It is also with this trust that I may one day feel comfortable to submit my poetry to the critique of my peers (as the saying goes ‘kill your babies’).
Lastly on this matter of why I write, I would like to say that before now I never considered one of the main fringe benefits of writing and I do realise by adding what I’m about to say may make me look fairly stupid (that’s fine with me). Nevertheless, I finally discovered that one could if lucky make money out of writing! And I do realise that this is a rarity and those that do make money from their work are either talented or just in it for the money, but this will not defer me from entering my unpublished work into a competition (who knows, I might actually have a small degree of talent?).


My Life as a writer

Then we see in a mirror
Poorly as we shall see face to face
Now I know in part
As I will know fully
Just as I am fully known.
– 1 cor 13, my favourite scripture.

From a young age I wrote, mostly short stories and flights of fancy. I’ve always been a quiet one, the lost in thought daydreamer the teachers either admired or despised, eg; passage from report year 2: ‘David’s stories do not always reflect his capability. They are often short and lack description but they contain some great ideas. With a more concentrated effort David will be able to produce and publish some well thought out and structured stories.’ And from a year 4 report: ‘David’s writing is well sequenced and imaginative.’ During my school years however writing was not so much an interest but a means to satisfy educational requirements. Throughout my schooling the work I did suffered from the meritocracy of being forced to completion, things were never done at my own pace and when everything went pear-shaped I submitted the work anyhow, to lazy to go back and change mistakes. With the inevitable freedom from the shackles of education I came ill prepared for the dull propensity of real life (work) and so I made little effort towards my creative outlets. Then change was brought about in the summer of 2001 when I travelled to Europe. The change was both physical and meta-physical, my eyes widened to my own prospects and possibilities and for the first time I felt that I could create without the burden of time or criticism. And like a headstrong weight lifter I thought I would start with something well above my bar: poetry. I am however a quick learner and I soon realised the complexity behind the simplest of poems. It has taken me years to reach a stage where I feel slightly comfortable with multi verse poems and it may be several more years before I can write a ballad, but I push on, the writer in me demands this now.
The year is now 2004 and coming up to my twenty-fourth birthday I am again beginning to feel the constraints of time and criticism in school. Only now I see it not as a hindrance to my art but a benefit I cannot afford to refuse, for after this I hope to have the skills and techniques that will bring my work into the world.


Selected writers and their works

(In no particular order)

W.B. Yeats, my favourite poet:
‘I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those I fight I do not hate,
Those I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed a waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death’.
-An Irish Airman Foresees his Death.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, my childhood hero:
‘”It certainly is delicate,” said Holmes, with an amused smile,
“But I have not been struck up to now with its complexity. It
has been a case for intellectual deduction, but when this original intellectual deduction is confirmed point by point by quite a number of independent incidents, then the subjective becomes objective and we can say confidently that we have reached our goal. I had, in fact, reached it before we left Baker Street, and the rest has merely been observation and confirmation.”’
-The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire.

William Blake, a total visionary:
‘O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.’
-The Sick Rose.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, my favourite author:
‘Macondo was already a fearful whirlwind of dust and rubble being spun about by the wrath of the biblical hurricane when Aureliano skipped eleven pages so as not to lose time with facts he knew only too well, and he began to decipher the instant that he was living, deciphering it as he lived it, prophesying himself in the act of deciphering the last page of the parchments, as if he were looking into a speaking mirror. Then he skipped again to anticipate the predictions and ascertain the date and circumstances of his death. Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.’
-One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Yamamoto Tsunetomo, samurai scholar:
‘You cannot tell whether a person is good or bad by his vicissitudes in life. Good and bad fortune are matters of fate. Good and bad actions are Man’s Way. Retribution of good and evil is taught simply as a moral lesson.’
-Hagakure, The Book of the Samurai.