Brain Food #851: Why we write
Is why we do anything at all
Thoughts of the day
Some elements of being human are such an essential part of our existence that wondering how and when they came into being may seem more superfluous than the act of questioning existence itself.
It is not entirely certain when writing was invented, let alone why, yet it is due to the historical remnants of writing itself that we are even able to make such speculations — writing, then, helps keep track of history, amongst other things. As with most great discoveries, there are claims that people started writing independently across Mesopotamia, China, and Mesoamerica, though the most widely accepted version of history says that writing originated in Mesopotamia in 3,400 BCE. The Mesopotamians allegedly started writing to facilitate long-distance communication as part of their trading practices. In some ways, writing was invented to close the distances between us.
Since then, it has evolved into a daily necessity, sometimes even an indulgence. And so I have been wondering why we write, beyond the value of communications, news, or recording history and knowledge. What is the purpose of writing for leisure, or as an art form? Perhaps you are also writing something, and wondering the same. Perhaps you are making something that is not writing, but replace ‘writing’ with any other creative verb and the question still applies.
A great source to understand why we write is, of course, writing itself. So as a simple means of inspiration, here is a selection of quotes on why we write.
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Writing gave John Keats the ability to see the beauty in all things, even if in his mind he had been unable to achieve his goal of leaving ‘immortal work behind him’ before his untimely death:
“I have left no immortal work behind me—nothing to make my friends proud of my memory—but I have lov’d the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember'd.”
Keats, of course, is still remembered, even if this was never meant to be something he (or anyone else) could ever predict.
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Joseph Campbell on writing as another means of seeing (the writer is, in his words, the seer), and as a way of bringing forth everyone’s stories:
“Anyone writing a creative work knows that you open, you yield yourself, and the book talks to you and builds itself. To a certain extent, you become the carrier of something that is given to you from what have been called the Muses-or, in biblical language, ‘God.’ This is no fancy, it is a fact. Since the inspiration comes from the unconscious, and since the unconscious minds of the people of any single small society have much in common, what the shaman or seer brings forth is something that is waiting to be brought forth in everyone. So when one hears the seer’s story, one responds, ‘Aha! This is my story. This is something that I had always wanted to say but wasn't able to say.’ There has to be a dialogue, an interaction between the seer and the community. The seer who sees things that people in the community don't want to hear is just ineffective. Sometimes they will wipe him out.”
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Similarly, Maggie Smith on writing (and reading) as a form of connection to others, when we discover parts of our own minds in the words of someone else:
“This is the strange life of books that you enter alone as a writer, mapping an unknown territory that arises as you travel. If you succeed in the voyage, others enter after, one at a time, also alone, but in communion with your imagination, traversing your route. Books are solitudes in which we meet.”
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Herman Hesse in Journey to the East described writing as a salvation from despair:
“I either had to write the book or be reduced to despair; it was the only means of saving me from nothingness, chaos and suicide. The book was written under this pressure and brought me the expected cure, simply because it was written, irrespective of whether it was good or bad. That was the only thing that counted. And whilst writing it, there was no need for me to think at all of any other reader but myself, or at the most, here and there another close war-comrade, and l certainly never thought then about the survivors, but always about those who fell in the war. Whilst writing it, I was as if delirious or crazy, surrounded by three or four people with mutilated bodies - that is how the book was produced.'”
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Clarice Lispector in The Hour of the Star on writing as salvation from symbolical death:
“I write because I am desperate and I’m tired, I can no longer bear the routine of being me and if not for the always novelty that is writing, I would die symbolically every day.”
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And finally, Rilke, in his first letter, where he presented writing not as a choice but as a reason for being:
“You ask if your verses are good. You ask me. You have previously asked others. You send them to journals. You compare with other poems, and you are troubled when certain editors reject your efforts. Now (as you have permitted me to advise you) I beg you to give all that up. You are looking outwards, and of all things is what you must now not do. Nobody can advise you and help you, nobody. There is only one single means. Go inside yourself. Discover the motive that bids you to write; examine whether it sends its roots down to the deepest places of your heart, confess to yourself whether you would have to die if writing were denied you. This before all: ask yourself in the quietest hour of your night: must I write?… ”
And this is why people who write write, why people who paint paint, people who make music make music, people who make products make products, etc: why we write is why we do anything at all.
While thinking about the contents of this post I came across the work of Elisa Gabbert, an essayist and poet. She wrote a piece on how she had decided to revisit Sylvia Plath, how she deserved a fresh look and read later in one’s life, beyond one’s angsty teenage years where she is usually first discovered. Gabbert soon found that someone else had already made (and published) this attempt and invitation to rediscover Plath before her, so the originality of her piece was gone.
But this is not an argument against originality; it is an argument in favour of the ubiquitously revelatory nature that writing can have. As the Mesopotamians intended it to, we write to find ourselves but, more importantly, we write to find each other.
A final note: you can still write and not think of yourself as a writer.
“The epiphany for me was that I wasn't a writer, and I had to do something with these texts. I put them in the streets as posters.” — Jenny Holzer
Voltaire said, “Writing is the painting of the voice.” Painting, which can capture everything and nothing. And with writing, we can only try to communicate what we intend, though as Jenny Holzer wrote in one of her infamous truisms, “The most profound things are inexpressible.”
Love that we all stop and wonder why? I am so glad that you are writing!