All writers are asked this question at least once during their careers, and those of us who make no secret of the fact that we would love to be in their position, feel the need to explain to ourselves why we undertake creative tasks. Most creative writing books I own encourage this form of blatant narcissism as a form of creative self-reflection, a journey into a writing sub consciousness, a Freudian (however fake) “writing” cure designed to help us understand our own practice. So in an attempt to comprehend myself, I’m undertaking the one task that all my books on writing theory recommend: write about why you write.
There are often a thousand ideas for stories in my head at any one time. Often I find myself thinking, “That’d make a great story,” or “I should write that down” or “This story of my life would make me famous” about something profound in my life; but I rarely do something about it. These unwritten tales are often worse than badly-written fiction, as, in allowing the death of an idea before is has even begun, I commit some kind of literary sacrilege.
Sometimes, I’ll sub consciously form a story for myself, for no one but me; if it’s not written, materialised, made tangible then it cannot be true. Is this writing at all? Does this cerebral story-forming constitute the same as the physical act of writing? Is it the same as forming a fiction on a page, as I do so now, my cheap biro scarring the paper like an inky razor?
Very rarely do I put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, but when I do it is for personal rather than monetary gain. There is something satisfying about displaying your talents for yourself. In this way, writing, for me, is an egotistical act, a form of unashamed self-gratification, a display of the fact that despite peoples’ perceptions, I can still be successful at something.
Writing is a selfish act for me, I write to express, but only express what I feel I can share and form unconscious, unwritten stories for the rest. This is mainly why nothing I ever write is completely finished or planned. Spontaneous fragments of fiction fill my “My Documents” folder on the communal computer and this does not bother me as much as it should. I’ve never been one to complete a project before beginning another, sporadically flitting from acrylic painting Arabic calligraphy to writing essays about writing to compulsively purchasing more books I probably won’t read but will dust every six months. Ironically, I teach all of my students – or at least I used to - that the best essay, the most valuable writing is planned, carefully thought out, predetermined as a set of legible notes, and yet I’m writing this with nothing but a semi-blank page and a black pen as an aid. Writers (or teachers for that matter) never practice what they preach; those who argue we should omit the adjectives often find they overload their own prose with adjectival verbosity, and those of us who advocate rigorous planning as a rule, always fail to plan rather than plan to fail.
This lack of planning is far from a cause for celebration; in fact, it shows quite starkly and scarily how all of my prose fiction eventually leads to creative non-fiction. Thus, a story about teaching inevitably ends up as a “Life in the Day” article, complete with anecdotal advice and personal quotes; a random musing about a parallel universe ends up starkly as a life I should or used to lead.
Maybe I just have a strangely egotistical, narcissistic belief that the whole world wants to read about me, greedily consuming fiction rooted in my own experiences. In this way, I am an openly conceited writer striving for the ideal of creating memorable fiction but inevitably concocting a written documentary of my life as it is now, as it was or as it may be. Maybe I should embark on my own memoirs rather than dangerously dabble in the art of prose fiction – get it all out of my system in a kind of autobiographical literary cleansing before venturing into the abyss of literary fiction.
I should. But I probably will not. I’ll probably just keep starting projects, endeavouring to finish them, turn them all into creative non-fiction and put them on my blog in the vain and narcissistic hope that they bring me pleasure and a sense of achievement in a world where success is measured through monetary gain and fame. After all, “we can’t all be heroes, someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.” Now who said that? And more importantly, does this count as a completed projected I can fill my hard drive with?
