Why I Write (and Read)
The world is crazy and frightening right now. The chaotic election and the continuing Covid-19 pandemic make it clear this won’t change anytime soon. As such, it is more important than ever to reaffirm the positive in our lives to weather the storm. For me that is writing and reading. Let me explain.
For Myself
Writing doesn’t have to be done for any other reason than to fulfill your needs. That’s part of its beauty. If you love writing, if it helps you emotionally, then just by the act of putting pen to paper or hand to keyboard you’ve already succeeded.
This mindset can also help overcome writer’s block born of self-doubt. It has served me well (the above paragraph is heavily plagiarized from high school). Don’t just stop worrying about whether your writing is good or bad. Throw out those categories altogether. Just write because you feel the urge to.
For Escape
The real world can be draining and limiting. It is natural to crave somewhere else. Books can provide this fantasy.
I love luxuriating in the chaotic, sweat-drenched melee of a battle, a fierce political discussion, or simply two people, sitting together, hands clasped. Scrolling through Twitter in quarantine can be replaced by the bridge of a spaceship. I write to create these worlds of release.
Movies and TV do this too, but I think that books often have a more thorough effect. The visuals in a movie are given to the viewer (save the occasional dark or off-screen scene). In a book, a reader must actively work with the text to create the world. A text can gesture at another reality, but it can never fully describe every aspect of it. Nor would any writer valuing their sanity ever attempt such a feat. A reader must step up and finish the creation of the world with their imagination. This symbiosis between book and reader involves reaching further outside of the self than watching a movie.
And when I say escape, I don’t just mean escapism. Journeying into another life, into another world, does not simply provide enjoyment: it provides new perspective. Our minds are confined by society’s concepts of justice, race, class, gender, sexual identity, happiness, parenthood, freedom, and so much more. The world of a book allows us the freedom to escape norms and conventions.
For example, in the Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie the galactic empire does not make gender distinctions between people. The protagonist struggles to recognize the gender distinctions of people from other cultures. If a reader fully engages with this perspective, they will inevitably be led to question the gender assumptions of our world. (I know I was. I kept identifying characters as male or female even though they weren’t and then examining which characteristics had led me to these categorizations.)
For Change
In the exchange between books and readers, in the challenging of assumptions, worldviews can be altered. With this, the world can change.
Not that this is like flipping a switch. Books can change minds, but even the most well-crafted stories cannot dictate how they are interpreted. The world of a book begins with its author but is fleshed out by readers. Therefore, every read of a book creates its own unique world. There is tremendous opportunity for wild variability. To miss this sprawling potential, I believe, is to miss the true opportunity of writing a book.
A letter from Flannery O’Connor drove this point home to me. A teacher wrote in to say how they thought much of her story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was a dream sequence rather than reality. O’Connor angrily dismissed the theory as ridiculous. Now, there is no particularly good evidence in the story for this theory. However, it cannot be ruled out. To do so, O’Connor would have needed to write a sort of guide on how to read the story. (Step 1. Read as reality and not a dream sequence.) Few authors would ever seek to dilute the imaginative power of their stories in this way.
The relationship between an author and a reader is not that of a grammar or math teacher, precisely trying to teach students rules. It is more an outstretched hand on the part of the author. If the reader takes the hand, they are pulled towards the author. Simultaneously, they possess the ability to pull the author towards them.
This doesn’t present an obstacle but an opportunity. O’Connor was under no obligation to accept the teacher’s theory, but instead of angrily dismissing it, she could have used it to look at her story from another angle and gained something. Writers are not gods. We too live in the world. Our minds are confined by society’s concepts of justice, race, class, gender, sexual identity, happiness, parenthood, freedom, and so much more. Though some may try to transcend them, these concepts make their way into our stories, sometimes in harmful ways. In engaging with a story, a reader can imagine ways in which the book’s world could be better, while calling out potential harm. One of my favorite things as an author is for someone to come up with an interpretation that I didn’t imagine. Each book has the potential to become so much more than its author envisioned.
For A Better World
Numerous studies have suggested that reading stories increases empathy. I believe the shared connection between author and reader, the upending of cultural assumptions, and the adoption of other perspectives all help to explain why. I write (and read) to engage with people and to have people engage with me. I write to bring the world together and hopefully, with all the messiness that entails, to help move it forward.
