Did I ever mention my reasons?
Yeah. I did. Just not like what this thread is asking us all to define it in specific, dreamy terms.
Well, process of elimination here: I don't write because I'm chasing a movie deal, or an anime adaptation, or a bookshelf with my name stamped on it in gold. That stuff is garnish; optional.
And quite frankly unreliable. Hey folks, don't quit your day job, okay? A one-hit wonder will only give you false hope and a miracle at best if you make it big. Get that? A miracle. Those rainbows over a pot of gold don't often appear.
So with that negative shit out of the way, I guess I write because there are ideas that simply do not shut up.
See, because certain characters who should've been evicted before my puberty hit pace around in my head like caged animals and start biting the bars if I ignore them. Oh, this one here, because there are worlds that feel incorrect if they only exist as foggy thoughts instead of sharpened worlds like when "genius" protagonists are only displayed as smart when the surrounding characters struggle to rub two brain cells together and ignite that fire under their smart asses. Writing is how I pin these concepts down and force them to behave. Or at least confess their reasons for being rowdy in my cranium; and if I publish said confession, any reader out there with patience and an interest might be struck with an epiphany over some scrambled collection of words I put together has a poorly executed potential for greater if done right.
Yeah, I'm never going to admit I'm good, let alone great or that nonexistent term for perfect. I'm not and I don't ever plan to be. I'm not writing to impress anybody but myself. So why should I try harder?
That's right.
But, no, really. Why do I write? It's fun, yeah, but on a more serious note I write because it's the only way to take grief, rage, awe, curiosity, and that low-grade existential static and turn it into a machine that runs instead of rots. I don't want therapy. I want combustion. I want something ugly and honest and precise to come out the other end and not smell like shit.
If there's a dream in me, it's gonna be like this: that someone, somewhere, stumbles into my work and feels briefly, violently seen. Not comforted. Not coddled. Seen. That feeling where they had the same thoughts as I did but never put it into words. That they never conveyed how they felt. Like, I would reach through the page, point at them, and say, "Yeah. You too. I noticed."
If money happens, fine, but I don't give a flying fuck about the Benjamins. If adaptation happens, that's cool too, but Godspeed when my recent published stuff as that's fanfiction. If nothing happens except the work existing? The act itself already did what it needed to do; I had a thought, I wrote it down, and it got published. If it rolls downhill and smacks somebody on the way, hey, feel free to take it. I'm not benefiting from it anymore.
Yeah, so, I don't write for money, validation, or any of that very real and encouragable goals. I write because silence is unacceptable and this practice of mine is the loudest way I know how to exorcise the noise.
