What makes anyone sit down and write? There’s only one honest answer.
People write because they have to.
They have to write because it’s required at their job. They have to write to get the grade they’re seeking in school. Or they write because there’s a story inside their heads that has to get out onto the page, because if it doesn’t something slowly and painfully dies within them.
Everyone writes because they have to, especially those of us who call ourselves writers. We have no choice in the matter. We have to write.
Writing is such an integral part of my life that I find it hard to imagine not writing. You might classify it as a compulsion, possibly an addiction, and there might be some validly to that.
When I get busy doing other things and am not writing, something feels off within me. I’ve even felt depressed when I go too many days without writing.
I write because I have to. It’s something I know I was born to do.
How can I be so certain of this?
Because it’s the one thing that still interests me and drives me as much now as it did when I was a kid.
I fell in love with stories at a very early age, whether those stories were printed on the page to be read or their words provided the blueprint of movies, plays, and TV shows.
My parents are most likely to blame for providing the spark that became the burning fire to write within my heart.
They didn’t push me to write, they read to me. Children’s stories, comic books, and so forth. I saw my parents read, the newspaper, novels, and history.
As a kid we got a new book each month from Time Life about the Old West. I was fascinated by the pictures, especially the gunfights and the savage depictions of battles between soldiers and Indians.
Grandma Floyd also encouraged me to read, giving me my first Bible. In fact she gave me at least three Bibles that I’m aware of and told me I needed to read the Bible every day.
All of this activated something important within me — words are important and the stories those words form to tell are just as important.
This drove home even deeper within me when I realized that the movies I saw on the big screen like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark had writers behind them. By the Fourth Grade, George Lucas was already my hero because he was the guy who came up with those stories.
In Junior High and High School I continued to write and my passion was go on to UCLA Film School and become a professional screenwriter. For a variety of reasons that didn’t happen.
I convinced myself that my dreams were not practical and decided to get a degree in History, a subject which I loved but was also so easy that I could party nearly every night of the week and still graduate with honors.
I toyed with the idea of becoming a teacher like my dad, but that wasn’t my calling. I wound up instead getting involved in politics. There my writing skills were put to use, crafting press releases, speeches, and responses to constituent letters.
I then expanded out into putting my writing abilities and story telling abilities to work, crafting messages for candidates, writing their big glossy mailers, the scripts for their stump speeches, the occasional commercial for radio or TV, and finally into messaging for websites and social media platforms.
I technically had become a professional writer.
Yet in the midst of this success in politics, there was this nagging voice in my head. It kept telling me “You’re helping them tell their stories, but you’re not telling your stories.” As much as I tried to silence and ignore the voice, it wouldn’t shut up or go away.
I delayed and delayed, until I arrived at my 10 Year High School Reunion. People were very interested in my career in politics and impressed by the level of success I’d reached, but I knew there was something wrong. I wanted to be telling them stories about Hollywood and the movies my scripts had helped bring to screen.
That was the catalyst to get my ass in gear and get back to writing. I was going to become a professional screenwriter. I set time aside to write. And I did. I wrote and and wrote and wrote.
The scripts I wrote and co-wrote opened doors, made new friendships, and brought me closer and closer to my dream.
However, Hollywood is a hard nut to crack and there are plenty of people writing scripts and trying to get discovered. They’re a dime a dozen if not even cheaper. Just stop into a Starbucks or Coffee Bean in Los Angeles and there’s a 9 out of 10 chance that any person you see typing away on a MacBook (just like I am right now) is an aspiring screenwriter.
The set backs and the heartbreak have at times discouraged me, but that’s part of life. They’ve given me tougher skin, increased my ability to persevere, and made me more emotionally honest. They’ve made me a better writer.
My stories must be told. They do no good staying in my head, they have to get out and be shared.
And so I write, because like everyone else who writes, it’s something I have to do.