Yesterday's reading

It went well, I think; I read the Boneprince sequence from Chapter 2 of Mélusine (pp. 54-66). My audience consisted of my husband, my dissertation director, and 7 or 8 Creative Writing students there for an assignment. They were a good, attentive audience (some of the students were taking notes, which I find infinitely amusing), and since the venue is not large, 10 people was actually a comfortable number.

The thing is--and I'm not sure if it's an ironic thing, or a peculiar thing, or just a thing--the thing is, there is a possibility that those students were my own legacy to myself. The second time I taught Creative Writing, in the spring of 2000, I required my students to attend two readings over the course of the semester, and I distinctly recall at least one other TA saying, That's a really good idea. I should do that. This is the way of TAs, you understand; we borrow from each other, and hand good ideas down from one year to the next in a kind of half-oral, half-written tradition, only semi-formalized but also the best kind of community and solidarity. So it's possible--not probable, since it's hardly such a radical idea that someone else couldn't have thought of it independently--that whoever's teaching that section of Creative Writing is using an idea they got, at however many removes, from me, and that's why my audience was bigger than 2.

The notion is kind of cool, and kind of scary, and thinking about it for too long makes me feel like I'm about to wander into a time-travel story.

Why do you write?

jaylake asks (and answers), and oracne also asks.

I pondered this question for quite some time before I felt like I could even attempt to answer it. And you have to understand that my answer is not an answer, it's a myth (again in its proper sense as a story that helps us make sense of who we are and how our world works). The truth isn't tidy enough to be an answer.

I write because I can't imagine not writing. But I can't imagine not writing because I've brainwashed taught myself to accept WRITING as my default setting. Not with 100% success, mind you; I backslide and procrastinate. But in general, if I'm not-writing, it's because I'm doing something else, not because not-writing is my natural state of being.

If that makes any sense at all.

And it is the result of training. I didn't used to be like this. In college, I wrote when inspiration struck, which meant not very often, and not with a very high (for which, read 'rapidly approaching zero') completion rate. So over the last ten years or so, I've learned better discipline. I've also learned to give myself permission to take my writing seriously, as a vocation to be treated with respect, not a hobby to be apologized for. And that shift in attitude made a big difference in my day to day relationship with the writing.

I also write because the stories in my head want OUT. But, please note, why do you write? and why do you publish? are two different questions. I publish because I can get paid for it, because it means more people can read what I write, because publishing can set up a positive feedback loop and people I don't know will actually express a desire to read what I write. (I still can't get over that--it's like the coolest thing in the whole entire world.) But that's not why I write. In the beginning, it's all about the stories I tell myself, and really, that's why I write, to give those airy nothings a local habitation and a name.

I still don't feel as if I've answered the question. I write because I can, because I must, because there are stories that want to be told, and people that want to read them.

Also because it's the best damn job in the world, and I can't imagine doing anything else with the same fervor and outright joy with which I write.