Looking at Purpose

Why do we write?

Image credit given at end of this essay.

Why do we write? Apparently, not to become a best-selling writer who lives a successful life, having their writing career to comfortably support them, in their hope to live in the lifestyle of the rich and famous. Relatively few writers get this honor. (If it is an honor?)

According to GOOGLE, some of the most successful contemporary writers include:

• Stephen King — Known for horror, suspense, and fantasy novels like It and The Shining.
• J.K. Rowling — Famous for the Harry Potter series and The Casual Vacancy.
• Colleen Hoover — A bestselling author of romance and contemporary fiction like It Ends With Us.
• George R.R. Martin — Author of A Song of Ice and Fire, adapted into Game of Thrones.
• Margaret Atwood — Celebrated for The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments.
• Brandon Sanderson — Acclaimed for epic fantasy series like Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive.
• James Patterson — Known for his prolific output in thrillers like the Alex Cross series.

These close to a dozen writers have dominated bestseller lists, adaptations, and literary influence in recent years.

Again, according to GOOGLE, some of the best-selling classical authors include:

• Homer — Known for The Iliad and The Odyssey.
• Virgil — Famous for The Aeneid.
• Ovid — Author of Metamorphoses.
• Plato — Works like The Republic remain widely read.
• Aristotle — Influential texts on philosophy and science.
• Sophocles — Plays like Oedipus Rex are still popular.
• Euripides — Known for tragedies such as Medea.
• Seneca — Stoic philosopher and playwright.
• Cicero — Famous for his speeches and philosophical works.
• Marcus Aurelius — Meditations is a perennial bestseller.

These authors’ works have been reprinted and translated for centuries and continue to sell in large numbers worldwide.

What does that say for the thousands of others of us who write every day, some few getting published, some self-publishing, some sharing on various platforms, and others just piling their manuscripts on the closet shelf to gather dust with the hopes of being revisited someday in the future?

Many of us write in hopes of making the world a better place through true stories, memoirs, poetry, novels, fictional stories, and other literary works.

This essay and the following conversation are based on Troy Ford’s insightful piece:

Link: The Artist’s Woo A prayer for the discouraged

This is an exclusive sneak peek for FKB readers of my essay appearing during Pride Month in The BookStack Catalog, a wonderful newsletter devoted to promoting indie authors. I hope you enjoy it!

Troy,

Bitter-sweet piece. Love your quote: “Art is not the answer to your prayers. Art is the prayer.” But what about those who cannot eat or afford to pay the rent? And if not done to earn a living, having the books languish on the store shelf is at least as discouraging. When did writing become a second-tier activity? Or has it always been? Have we been blinded by the likes of the few BEST SELLERS that get published, sold, and celebrated? Sad situation for finding truth, experience, confirmation, lessons, realizations, etc., through the printed (or digitized) word? Takes a strong person to feel good about knowing that if they have “helped oneperson, then I have served my purpose.” Most of us writer hope for a larger audience of readers. All I can say is, KEEP ON KEEPING ON. Troy, you are a talent and a love. You are insightful in your writing. Keep on keeping on! Fondly, Michael

Thanks, Michael

to your question, I suppose, we do what we must until we can do just what we like. You and I both had careers in other fields for many years before writing became our main squeeze.

Troy,

I agree. I feel a little embarrassed, or should I say maybe pretentious, to say … to think that I have anything important to say, but at the same time, I do believe in myself, and know from comments of others that my words matter. Is it wrong to be ambitious and want a larger audience for my truths? Is fiction any more or less important in the human experience than is non-fiction? I am privileged to be able to write for the sake of writing. But there is something much larger and profound behind that desire to write, to share, which is parallel to something much larger in wanting to share one’s experiences and insights into truth, and to hope that one’s words will help to make the world a better place (trite but true), to correct wrongs, to defend those who need defense?

Michael,

I don’t think it’s a question of embarrassed or pretentious — and it’s not wrong to want to share your truth with as many people as you can, I’m not sure I would even class that as “ambition” per se unless it were to the exclusion of writing something that means something to you (or letting AI write it for you, for example.) My piece spoke to something even more fundamental, which is a wish to share truths with the Muse, let’s call it, which comes before most other considerations in my opinion. Without it, we’re just monkeys banging on typewriters… 🐒🙂

In the final analysis, if I may speak for others, we write because we can, because we want to, because we need to. We write to try to find truth, purpose, and comfort. We write to take a closer look at the joys and sorrows of life and to try to understand them. We write to process what we are thinking, what we are feeling, and what we are living. We write because we think it might help others in need and help others know they are not alone. We write to entertain, to make someone laugh, and to help us see our own follies. And these are only a few of the reasons.

So write on, fellow writers; read on, fellow readers; and congratulations to the handful who can earn a living doing this altruistic, noble activity.

P.S.

Ironically, AI, which I will never use to generate my stories, essays, and poetry, did generate the introductory image when asked, “Why do we write?” Go back and look at the image again and ask yourself, “How intelligent and accurate was that of AI?”

In some ways, I would like to believe that some of the good that may come from AI is its ability to survey everything that has ever been said about everything (for example, why we write in the case of the graphic at the top of this piece) and gather it and condense it in ways that make it digestible for human beings.

Wouldn’t it be nice if writers and AI could learn to work together to do an even better job of doing the good job writers are already doing?

Then again, how much of AI do we already have to thank AI for: GOOGLE, Wikipedia, reference searching, spell-checking, grammar-checking, historical overviews, fact-checking? Rhetorically thinking, “I’ll let you decide.”