Why I Write

Photo by Angie Garrett via Flickr/Creative Commons

The temperature is quickly climbing to 100 degrees. I find refuge in a cool corner of a coffee shop and a mason jar of iced mango green tea.

I’m here on a mission to answer one simple, little question posed in a thick, heavy book that I’ve been toting around for a week. It’s a writing exercise composed of a one sentence prompt: Why do you write?

Open journal. Pick up pen. Ready. Set. Go.

I write for the sake of my heartbeat, to remind myself that I exist.

I write because I can’t help myself.

I write when my hand trembles in fear of the thoughts haunting my mind.

I write between lines for those cast aside to the margins.

I write to punish. I write to praise.

I write to hold tight to grudges. I write to forgive.

I write to feel sincere. I write to expose myself as a fraud.

I write to feel human. I write to feel divine.

I write as an act of prayer, each sentence a chant, a hymn, a meditation.

I write as an act of play, to feel free as a girl flying high in her favorite swing at the neighborhood park.

I write to find community. I write to escape to my own little world.

I write because I want you to love me.

I write to be immortal. I write when I feel ready to die.

I write because I believe that in the end stories are all we have.

*Inspired by “Why I Write” by Terry Tempest Williams

Why do you write?