Why Do You Write?

Ever since I read David Morrell's fascinating article Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing on Backspace I couldn't get the question out of my head, why does anyone write?

He basically says because writers have unresolved traumas that cause them to write. So I wrote him and asked if there could be writers without traumas. Here's what he told me in an email:

"F. Scott Fitzgerald said there were no second acts in American lives. Applying this to writing, we could say that if a writer creates in relation to a trauma, he or she stops being creative when the trauma is resolved. This has been the case in a number of American writers. But for most of us, the traumas continue. For example, until 1987, I wrote in response to my father's death in WWII and the orphanage I was put in. But after 1987, I wrote in response to my son's death from bone cancer. I never do it deliberately, however. The stories insist."

If you don't know who David Morrell is, he is the award winning author of FIRST BLOOD, the novel that started the Rambo series.

So, I've been trying to determine my trauma, but it eludes me - I've been lucky most of my life - normal childhood, normal straight-arrow adulthood, living the American Dream. The best I could come up with is that I fear loss, but I have not had any major losses. Could there be levels of traumas that affect each of us differently? My losses are nothing compared to his, but could we both be affected the same way and hence have this need to write?

His response:

"The trauma need not be a violent dramatic one in the sense of child abuse or things of that nature. For an author friend, it was the death of his father when he was 8. He often writes about perfect summers of youth that are interrupted. Another author told me that he had a perfect childhood, and then he added, "But I got picked on a lot." He now writes about assassins righting wrongs.

The key questions are:

Why do I want to be a writer? The authentic answer to that is 'Because I need to be.' But why do I NEED to be? What accounts for the obsession?

The answer to that leads you to self-understanding. You said you 'fear loss.' That's an interesting statement and a major theme. You might never know why you fear loss. That's not the point. It's your core emotion and perhaps the reason that you tell stories.

Writers' block is possibly caused by 3 things.

1. The story is just no good, and the subconscious realizes it.

2. The author becomes anal retentive in the first draft and can't move from sentence to sentence.

3. The author doesn't listen to what the story wants to do. Our goal is to serve the story. We must open ourselves and let the story talk to us.

The latter is the best advice I can give to anyone."

Why do you write?

Note: A longer version of his Backspace article is available in his book on writing LESSONS FROM A LIFETIME OF WRITING, which will soon be re-released as THE SUCCESSFUL NOVELIST: A LIFETIME OF LESSONS ABOUT WRITING AND PUBLISHING. (From Source Books).



His latest novel, SCAVENGER is now available everywhere.

Sailing is a Lot Like Writing

After my interview with first time novelist Patry Francis, author of The Liar's Diary, I realized that she like many hopeful writers has gone through similar experiences.

It's like you decide you want to be a writer, but life gets in the way. I don't mean in a bad way - you pursue your career to make a living after you find you can't as a writer or get married, then have children, raise them, enjoy them and then you decide you have the time to write that novel you always wanted to write.

Patry like myself and others I'm sure knew as a child that we wanted to be writers, but life got in the way - she was a waitress for 25 years before The Liar's Diary was published, and she has a family and I'm writing my fourth unpublished novel after 25 years of my adult life and raising three children.

She called two earlier novels she wrote, her practice novels and this too seems to be a right of passage for all novelists. Stephen King wrote five novels before his first was published and Dean Koontz wrote four; John Grisham self published his first novel.

But I think there is more to this - you have to live life to have enough experiences to write a novel. I remember when I was 17 and I sat down to write a novel. The thoughts didn't come; the page remained blank and then I realized I didn't have anything to say. I hadn't lived long enough to form my unique view of the world - my writer's view of the world. In fact, the more I write the clearer my vision becomes and what I want to say.

Patry certainly had perseverance to keep her dream alive all of her life and she had the passion to follow through. It seems that this is what it takes to be a writer, a published writer because we are all writers; we all have a unique voice and a unique view of the world. Of all the advice I've received and read from published writers, agents, and others in the business the one thing they all said is to keep trying and never give up.

Passion will help you persevere, but you have to love what you do to sustain your efforts. Love drives everything. Years ago when I was into sailing and a good friend of mine, an older man who had sailed all his life said, "We must be crazy to be into sailing." What he meant was that it took so much time, effort, work, and expense to maintain our sailboats for those rare occasions when the wind, the water, and your skills to get the boat moving perfectly all worked harmoniously and you glided across the water effortlessly, freely, and in sync with nature. Those rare times were the Holy Grail of sailing and we all doggedly pursued it with an addiction that was unprecedented. It was the common thread that held all of us together like an extended family. It was simply love - love of what we were doing and it sustained us through the best and worst of times.

Writing is the same. There is a tremendous amount of time, effort, and doubt to produce the products of our craft, but we still do it despite the odds simply because we love to.

To catch the interview with Patry Francis, visit the Algonkian Writers Conferences site by clicking on The Literary Life and How to Live It.

Email or Snail Mail an Agent?

Ever wonder what literary agents prefer: an email or snail mail query for your novel or manuscript? I’ve expanded my earlier article, “Desperately Seeking an Agent” and have interviews with several New York literary agents and their thoughts on email verses snail mail queries.

One agent believes agents’ preference for email or snail mail is a generational issue. “First of all, opinions about email are definitely colored by generational considerations. Younger editors and agents prefer it as the communication method of choice to us older fogies …”

Take a look at the piece on the Algonkian Writers Conference site.

and see the best way to pitch your book – a must read for everyone seeking an agent.