Why do you write?

I don’t know about you but I have been asked that question several times over my career. By people in the business, friends, peers and complete strangers, all have asked me. I always (well mostly) respond in the same vague mood – “Because, I love it.” That is not always true of course but what else do you say. I want to be rich. I want to be famous. I want to be the next big thing … none of these fit me. The one vision of grandeur that I do have is to see my work in film. Cannot claim to have been there but I can boast that I have been close.

Of course, no one cares about close. No one cares (or perhaps even believes you) that you have had a book make it to the acquisition editor at a New York House (no less) but just didn’t make it onto the spring catalog, or the following winter catalog and ultimately was dropped. Or, that your script that you worked on tirelessly for nearly two years was purchased but never moved beyond the shelf of some film studio executive’s office, until it too was tossed aside.

These efforts and outcomes coupled with hundreds of rejects that range form mundane form letters to flaming rejections that insult your abilities or fundamental attributes that make you a human. None of this lends itself for a confidence session. Still, we trudge on. We write, submit, wait and wallow in disappointment. Then why write? Like I said, “Because, I love it.”

I don’t write for the editor who was a failed writer, or the editor who is successful at his or her craft for that matter. I don’t write for my confidence, nor do I write with the hopes of being the next King, Saul, Koontz or Barker. I write for the love of it and the one or two of you out there that read my prose.

I will write in some form until my dying day, if able. I will wallow in self-pity and the parade of rejects and forget them all with each publication, no matter how small. In an odd way, it makes me happy … it’s good to be happy, no?