Why I Write

It’s a question I’ve never really thought about at length until I started studying for a Master’s in Writing at Warwick Uni. Putting pen to paper or fingers to keys was always just something I did, and enjoyed, and so why not?

When this question was posed in a room full of like-minded writers, I noticed many had specific goals in mind, novels written that they wanted to refine through skills learned on the MA, plans to get published, to be a writer (in the ‘I make a living from it’ sense). I didn’t have a novel (not one I’d ever seek to release into the world anyway)! I just had this thing inside me, a feeling, usually first thing in the morning, a compulsion to write, and to get better at it.

Since starting the MA, I have written more consistently than at any other time in my life, and noticed improvement in my work along the way, but still, when I attempted to unpick the why I write question, a definitive answer eluded me. Until recently.

I’m taking a module on Writing Human Rights and Injustice this year, and as time has gone on, I’ve realised something that has been holding me back for a long time. It’s fear. Mainly of being judged, of being criticised (in an unhelpful, damaging way), that people reading my work will be thinking, how dare I think I’m any kind of authority to write on that topic or tell that story? Who am I to write that?

I’ve always struggled with that voice in my head saying I’m not good enough. I’m sure many writers (if not all) will know that voice in some way. The whisper that says, “that sentence, that scene, that piece of dialogue, that memory you’re trying to translate to memoir, is dreadful, what were you thinking!?” But then, something hit me about writing and about life, if I don’t speak up, if I don’t write down the things I have to say, who will?

Writing, for me, is about having a voice, one that it’s my right (and desire) to translate from my head onto the page, and maybe share with others (if they’re like-minded, open-minded, and most importantly, kind).

Do I want to get published? It would be nice, of course, but that isn’t my sole aim, and it’s freeing to say that. It actually takes a lot of pressure off what I’m doing.

I’ve started a new piece for the human rights assignment. It’s way out of my usual comfort zone, in a form where I have fewer (if any) places to hide. Non-fiction, a memoir about my experiences of motherhood, focusing on what it’s like to have twins with autism in a world that is not built for them.

The experience of writing memoir has helped me realise why I write both fiction and now non fiction: to have a voice. I hope some of you (and others in the world) will read what I have to say, and hear it.