Writing 101: Why Write?

June 28, 7:54 PMBoise Writing ExaminerToran Ybanez

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As writers, we begin at the beginning. A budding storyteller finds great difficulty in crafting their stories from any vantage point but their own. A seasoned poet struggles with their composition and prose. Every sunrise and set, millions of writers across the world take a running leap across the chasm that is genre, and are lost in the difference.

As we all struggle along the road of written accomplishment and self-betterment, we make distinct efforts to break the constraints of our particular style. We look to our peers in search of help, but too often are they caught similarly.

We need help, and outside eyes. We require audience, and stray readers' glances. A writer is concerned not with themself, but with their art. The nature of our work is important, and vastly so. A writer may reshape his world, losing himself in the non-existent, giving his whole to the alternate reality that he creates for himself. Or, turning his attention outward, a writer may reshape his world, not by reshaping his mind, but by impressing upon those about him a need for a new kind of thinking.

Literature is the guiding principle of societal law; it is the pre-conceptual prototype for the next generation, exploring the vast indefinite of the universe through conversation; it is the precursor of all things to come.

"We have never lived enough. Our experience is, without fiction, too confined and too parochial. Literature expands it, making us reflect and feel about what might otherwise be too distant for feeling." - Martha Nussbaum, American philosopher

The purpose of the pen is the salvation of mankind; literature is our humanity. Let us not abandon it to simmer into mush in the course of unremarkable life. Our literature, even personal, must be granted new life with each waking breath; for this, we must grant ourselves new life with each waking step. Let us, as writers, begin to thrive; the muse will follow suit.

To be without the eyes and the ears of the world / this is to not read. / To be without the tongue of the world / this is to not write. / To be blind, deaf, and dumb to the wonderful world that is / this is to not have lived at all. / And if no one speaks of remarkable things / the world fades quickly into the night. ~toran david