“Why do you write?” A simple question, with a thousand answers.
I write because I want to escape. I think too much. I get lonely. The ideas pop into my head and they’ll bother me until I write them down. It’s the easiest way for me to communicate. It’s fun. It’s easy. I’m good at it, and probably many more reasons I can’t think of right now.
I guess the main reason is to escape… and maybe because I think too much.
Writing is like breathing for me, it’s just there, and it’s just something I’ve always done without thinking. When I was young, I would write stories about two sisters called Swim and Sam who were based on me and my childhood best friend. In my teen years I wrote a story about a girl who was rescued from her horrible family by her best friend Charlie. I also began a very long-winded story, that I’m still yet to finish around fifteen years later, about a young girl who lives in a cemetery and can talk to ghost.
My brain just gets lost in thoughts and I can’t help but go with it.
I always longed to be someone who was always lost in a book, but I would struggle to read a full book and I’m still the same now; it takes a special book for me to be able to finish it. I don’t like knowing it’s coming to an end, which says a lot about me, but the books that never had to end lived in my mind. Even if I put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboards) and wrote it, it never actually had to end because it could live on in my mind.
I do worry about how I’m going to let go of characters I’ve created when their stories are actually done. I’ll miss them like old friends, which I image other writers feel too, but I guess that brings me to another reason why I write; I’m often quite lonely.
I’ve always been lonely, which is sad to admit. Growing up I always had friends, but they always stayed somewhere else; school, the next town over, or only visited on a weekend. When I was on my own I longed to be with someone, a friend who didn’t have to leave, and so that’s why I went on adventures as Swim and Sam. That’s why Charlie was such a good friend to the character I can’t even remember the name of, and why even now in my writing, everyone has such close-nit friendships, and ride-or-die best friends; it’s all I ever wanted, and in a story was the only way I could have that.
Bit sad right?
I’ve always kept the worlds I escape into myself, but I’m learning to enjoy sharing them worlds, whether they be a part of my real world or my fictional worlds. I’ve come to realise they help others feel less lonely too and that’s a sentiment that makes me feel warm and fussy. I can write you a friend in a world where you’re a different person, or I can write an experience I’ve had that makes your shoulders relax and think ‘I wasn’t alone after all.’
Most of my family are artistic folk. My brother and cousins are all artists, and although they write too, it’s the artistic side I’ve always envied. The ability to sit and draw something without any thought is magic to me, and something I can only do with words; I can’t paint a picture on a canvas, but I can paint a picture in your mind, and I’m starting to realise, that’s pretty cool too.
So, why do I write? Because I’m an artist that can’t draw and I hate being on my own. It’s how I cope with the world and help make it more colourful.
Why do you write?
Gwen Richards 