I write because...
I’m doing well this week. I signed up for one of the Wordpress University courses yesterday, and then completely missed the first assignment arriving in my in-box. Does that mean I currently hold the record for missing the start of the course, let alone the fifth, sixth, or seventh exercise?
The title of today’s exercise is “I write because…”. I gather I’m supposed to have some lofty mission that I have embarked on. Forgive me if I’m suppressing laughter, but no. I just write. I always have done. I think perhaps in the early days of writing a blog I tried to “play the game”, but then I realised that doing so turned the blog into a sausage machine pumping out unoriginal derivative junk.
Ok. I’ll try to answer the question, rather than go off on one about marketing morons masquerading as bloggers.
I write in order to empty my head. My life is filled with obligations, expectations, places to be, things to know, things I should have done, and so on. Along the way – working in a sometimes stressful job, bringing up children, and running a twenty four hour family laundry and tidying service – it’s very easy to lose myself. I end up with very little that is “mine” – so I suppose the blog becomes the one thing that is just about “me”. Of course I write a lot about people, places, and things, but it’s generally my own idiotic thoughts about them.
Does that fulfill the brief? Is that a good enough reason to write? I suppose another reason might be the attraction of talking to myself. I can sit here, typing away furiously at the keyboard, imagining a conversation with an unknown audience, where you hang on my words and applaud at the end of a spirited rant about something entirely forgettable. Maybe that thought should stay inside my head.