Why Do I Write?

I have been asked this question many, many times: why do I write? Heck, I have asked myself this same question many times too. It's just something I do. Like some people have a habit of early morning run in the park, or others a late afternoon cocktail in a pub, or the Saturday night cinema or the Sunday morning goIf session; I write. Other than that I don't have a logical answer.

Throughout history there's infinity of men and women, asking themselves the same question while putting down lines and lines of words. I don't know what others do, I write even when I don't have pen and paper, or a computer.

I write in my head first, accumulating unconnected words and jumbled up ideas. These get shuffled about in the most disorderly manner, in my mind, and those seem best represent my vague idea of a certain subject would come to my finger tips and onto the keyboard. Now I begin to know what the article is about and quickly put in a temporary title, before I forget what I am supposed to be writing about!

It doesn't always work! Most illogically, the subject matter is not always the determining factor. I might start off for instance, trying to follow a particular theme I had in mind, but somehow, the few lines I got down on the screen show me that they suit far better a different theme all together. In that case, I wouldn't argue, but let my thoughts follow the new theme and simply change the title!!

I know, all this sounds rather chaotic. It is. But the strongest instinct, or the words, or the ideas would automatically win through. The weaker idea, in other word, what to me the less interesting idea, would disappear for not being competitive enough to gain my effort to turn it into an article.

As to the other question I also get asked often: how do I find so many different subjects to write about. Well I don't go about finding them. It's more like they find me. What I mean is that we are all surrounded by people, or daily happenings, important or trivial, significant or frivolous; things are always happening all round us. We, whether conscious of them or not, absorb and retain some of it in our subconscious minds, and may have even formed a few of our own opinions about them, though we don't necessarily reveal them, talk about them, or write them down.

These will show up though in our mind, if we got a few minutes to review the day and decide to do just that, write some of them down ... I do, most days.

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