Why do you write?

[Soul Jelly]

This might well have a straightforward answer for all of you, but I was feeling quite introspective before and it got me thinking.

I've been writing - and reading - for as long as I can remember. Short stories, novellas, blog posts, poetry, you name it. One day I hope to make, if not a career out of it, a publication or two to add to my resumé. Whilst I break from original writing to work on a comic, I'm back to dabbling in fanfiction. But when I first picked it up again after a long two years (not including the occasional anon fic-meme request), I was kind of obsessed with validation. What was the point of writing if no one was going to read it? Who was I writing for? Why bother?

Then I realised that there was a certain liberating feeling in writing for yourself and only yourself that I'd never truly realised before, (whilst that's always been my main goal in writing - as well as seeking endlessly to not be completely awful at it - it's been hard to motivate myself without outside encouragement). Armed with that, I've plunged into fanfiction with renewed vigour; in particular, I'm having a lot of fun writing and fleshing out minor characters, as well as creating my own adventures and storylines in a fictional world I love, and one that I believe has potential for a lot more depth and development.

And then there's the shippy stuff of course, to cater to the romantic-at-heart. ;]

So, what do you write? What compels you to write and why? What's your favourite part about writing?

Discuss, if you like.

[SeeMeInTheShadows]

Because I feel I have stories to tell.

I guess that would be the most simple answer. But you see, ever since I was a kid, I was imaginitive. I have a wooden playset in my backyard (with swings, a slide, a few "room" about two by two feet, a large sandbox underneath. That park was everything, from a ship at sea, a secret base in the woods, a pokemon world, a camp, a castle, a hideout for super heroes, you know name it.

I could spend hours out there, just by myself, making up stories and acting them out, and I would go for weeks at a time with the same story. And the thing is, a lot of the things I pretended show up in my writing in one way or another. I don't know if that answers your question, but it is what it is.

Fanfiction is a different reason. I write what I wish we could have seen, to a certain extent (like, emotions and friendships I wish had been revealed) and I exxagerate that. Probably the same reason I read fanfiction.

And I think writing is fun. To me, it's like watching a TV show or reading, because sometimes it's just as much of a journey.

[aelitaxwilliam]

To put it simply, I write what I want to read. Of course, that's just putting it in the most mundane way I can. Sometimes I want to read something that's light and happy. Sometimes I want to shape relationships differently because I'm frustrated or disagree with how the producers have set characters up together. Sometimes, I want to read something dark and terrible and that I know would never happen to me. But at the end of the day, I'm a slave to my whims. It works well because I'm not planning on making a career out of writing, so I want to get the most joy out of it that I can (obviously you can take a totally different approach than me and still love writing, but hey, this way works for me).

[Stella Luce 333]

I think my strt was very simler to what Shadews has said. Even when I was yong, I wold pretnd that I was a charctr in one of the shows I watchd...I guss those were sort of like my first fan fics...

[naruto'sramengirl]

I used to do the same thing too. I love to pretend that I was someone else. One of the main reason I write is because I'm always daydreaming. Even at night. I love to twist things that I see in the real world and make a story out of them in my own world.

I've spent hours walking around my room (and jumping) thinking about an idea for another scene or adventure to a story of mine. I write for me mostly. It's a need of mine to expel these ideas of mine out. I want to share them with others, but at the end of the day, I write them to see how they really look as a whole story. Until I actually write down the whole thing and fill in the gaps, the stories will always remain floating around in my mind.

[Guest]

Because they said I couldn't.

[Stella Luce 333]

I didn't get a lot of good grdes on my Englsh writng prjcts ether...

[Atlas]

English reports are different from writing stories. Different set of talents needed to do it.

Oh, I write because if I didn't my teacher would fail me.
Seemed like a good enough reason.

[cya6]

I write because I get ideas. I'll play these ideas out in my head for hours, days, any time I have. more often then not they're violent and depressing, because nothing will get me thinking like tormetting the tar out of my favorite characters.

If I get an idea that I work out enough that I realize I actually have enough in it to write a story, if I like the idea enough, and if the story wouldn't be so horrible as to turn off people, I'll write it. Also, I shy away from writing too violent fics, and dabble more in mentally twisting characters.

Not to say all my fics are like that, though most of my ideas are. The ones that work best get put on paper, and most of those will make it onto fanfic (obsviously only if they are actually fanfic )

But that's why I have so many stories in progress. XP

[Tsunamix]

I write for two reasons:

1. It's the only thing I'm good at, and that's only for fan fiction.

2. I need to live vicariously through my stories and characters to compensate for the fact that I've never accomplished anything that all my peers have and that everyone in cartoons (CL included) seems to have accomplished as well and to compensate for my envy towards such people.

[Hika-chan]

Because writing, for me, is like a passion. Morphine. I'm a freak inside, geek outside. There would be times when I feeling down, when I saw my crush is tweeting about another girl, when I was left by my friends, when I was scolded too much by my parents. And here comes the fury bunnies of ideas coming in my head, asking to be written as soon as possible.

When I'm writing, it's like the world only consist my imagination, language and literature lessons, and maybe music I love to listen to. It's like morphines--it let me go away and refresh me from my problems, but makes me greater.

But as I learn from FFn, I realized that sometimes you have some ego you have to press. You can't leave a project abandoned if you've been promising to other, for example. And this is me, living in my world of stories.

And this is the reason why my story rarely fluff.

Dream out Loud! =)

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