Why do I love writing?
It’s 3am as I write this (because if you know me you’ll know that my sleep schedule is a pile of rubbish). It’s 3am and I’ve decided that instead of sleeping, I wanna spend my time writing this blog post that only like 5 people will probably read.
I love it.
It’s a massive question to ask myself really, why I love to write and what it actually does. I always think that talking about myself writing is pretentious and honestly it probably is but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop talking about it, because it’s one of the things I enjoy most.
We sort of had to answer this question in one of our creative writing seminars and had to really reflect on that question with George Orwell’s Essay (aptly titled) ‘Why I Write?’ (1946). He splits it into a few different motives behind writing and I guess the ones that I relate to the most are ‘Sheer Egoism’ and ‘Aesthetic Enthusiasm’. The former meaning that I like how the idea of ‘being a writer’ makes me sound, which is admittedly kinda selfish because it’s for other people’s perception of myself, but I think the more I write and the older I’ve gotten, the less important that part has become. Admittedly though, I strive to eventually have the title of a ‘poet’ or an ‘author’, I feel like I’ll probably never earn it though? I’m not sure, I have a few conflicting opinions about myself regarding that. I mean, I’m writing an entire blog post about myself, so wouldn’t it be inherently incorrect to say that I don’t have at least some elements of Orwell’s idea of ‘Sheer Egoism’? With regards to the latter ‘Aesthetic Enthusiasm,’ it basically means that I like the details of writing. When I’ve written what I believe to be a good poem, it’s usually one in which I’ve presented my ideas in a way that brings pleasure to me. I know I’ve written a good poem when it was difficult to write too. Though poetry is a subjective thing, my favourites are the ones that present something in a way that leaves me impressed.
So those are two reasons behind why I write, but I think the answer to why I love writing is because of the solace it gives me emotionally.
The very reason I started writing poetry was to sort of vent out an experience I had with someone who spread a pretty nasty rumour about me, and to this day I STILL think those are the best poems I’ve ever written? Maybe I’m biased because they were my first (they’re in my first ever blog post if you wanted to check them out). I entered those poems into a competition, I was one of the winners, and this is when I fell in love with writing. Maybe I should thank that guy for the rumour because without it, maybe I wouldn’t be the same writer I am now – I’m not gonna say that I wouldn’t have started writing because of him though, because I know I would’ve. Mainly because it allows me to document my emotions and thoughts. I’ve written poems about my mental health when it wasn’t in the best place and now that I’ve reached what I’d call the happiest I’ve been in years, I can reread them and see how far I’ve come. Maybe they don’t make sense to anybody else except me but that’s okay because I write for myself. I’ve written about my family, my friends, my highs, my lows, my fears, my memories, and about things that I’ve noticed and just wanted to write about (like those weird shape/patterns birds make in the sky when they flock together? I don’t know, I just think they’re pretty). I reread my own writing all of the time (“sheer egoism”), to just see how different everything is (and then I’ll probably draft the poems I think are shit now).
If there’s something I’ve learnt about writing is that you’d never write the same thing if you’d written it at a different time. I worded that awfully, but I mean, if I’d decided to write this blog post in a few days’ time, it would probably be very different because between now and then, some part of me or some memory or some ideas, would’ve changed. So, I like documenting the now, and figuring out what it is that I want to say in this exact moment.
Right now, I would just like to say that I feel happy.
That is why I’ve written this today.
Sidenote: That’s probably the simplest way I’ve ever ended a blog post.
😊
