Why I Write

Why do you write?

If you’re a writer yourself, or if you’re thinking of taking up writing, you’ve probably already asked yourself this question. You might have decided you write because you feel you have something to say, or because you want to make your living as a writer, or because you have a burning desire to see your name — and your novel — in print.

In the past, I’ve used all of the above and more to justify the amount of time I’ve spent writing novels only a handful of people ended up reading. It’s only over the past few years, however, that I’ve come to realise there’s only one reason why I write.

Because I must.

All of the rest — money, success, recognition; lack of money, failure, indifference — is a side-show.

I started writing very young — I knew by the time I was five that I wanted to be a writer, and was fourteen the first time I sat down to write a novel. I don’t know why. No one in my family wrote. No one I went to school with wrote. Other than a few books hanging around the house, there wasn’t a single influence in my childhood pushing me in this direction. Most of my friends, family, and school-teachers were dismissive of my prospects and couldn’t understand where my urge to be a writer came from. Up until my mid-twenties, I received very little encouragement, and not a single hint from anyone in the industry that I had what it took to succeed.

Looking back, it seems strange that I was so drawn to a profession I knew nothing about, but that’s how it happened for me. Somehow, I just knew. And we’re not talking journalism or short stories or poems. Right from the off, I’ve always wanted to write novels and, even though I’ve managed to have the odd article, short story, or poem published in the past, it’s only ever been writing novels that’s mattered to me.

Having said that, though, there was a stage in my early thirties when I started to believe I would never get a novel published. I’d had hundreds of rejections and lost an agent. I’d invested a massive part of my life in something that continually seemed to be out of my reach. In terms of writing something commercially successful, I no longer believed I had what it took.

This realisation, as painful as it was, never once stopped me writing novels. If anything, it was only when I stopped thinking about what I hoped to gain from my writing that my writing really began to improve. This is why I believe the single most important question you can ask yourself as a writer is not why you write, but if you would still write if there was absolutely nothing in it for you. If no one published it, if no one liked it, if no one — not even your loved ones — could be bothered to read whatever it was you were writing, would you still have the urge within you to sit down and drag the words out?

If the answer to that is yes, then that is why you write.

Because you’re a writer.

Daniel Clay’s debut novel, Broken will be published by Harper Press in March.