Why Write?
The other day I picked up a book of essays and found a paragraph that made me cry because it so perfectly explains how I feel about blogging. The book is Leaping: revelations and epiphanies by Brian Doyle. In the section I read Doyle is trying to answer the question “Why write?”
Why then? Why do I write?
Because I see little stories everywhere and I like to catch them and show them to other people much as a child catches a moth and exhibits it with glee to friends and passersby.
Yes. That is exactly why I blog. I read that quote and my heart unfolded because Doyle’s words are exactly right. It fills me with joy to see the exact words that describe my experience. It also makes me a little sad, because I did not say them. Now that I’ve found the perfect words, to use other words feels paltry. This means that any time I answer the question “why blog” I will have to use Doyle’s words instead of my own. I wish I could have found my own perfect words.
I am aware that I probably will write my own perfect words in the future, because experiences evolve. Doyle’s words are perfect at this moment, but in a year, or two, or ten, my experience of blogging will have changed shape. It will need different words and Doyle’s words will not change. Then I will need to find new words to describe this different experience. I will make my own words again. Or perhaps at that distant juncture I will trip across another set of perfect words to describe my experience of writing. Or perhaps the perfect words will describe some other aspect of my existence. With all of these writers out there trying to explain everything, it is inevitable that someone has already wrapped words around my experiences. If I search hard enough I could find it. When I contemplate this, I begin to wonder why I bother writing at all. It has all been said before, hasn’t it? Even this question is not original to me. Doyle asked it and answered it with a quotation from the writer James Boswell who also asked the question then answered it thus:
Every size of readers requires a genius of corresponding capacity. Some minds are overpowered by splendor of sentiment, as some eyes are offended by a glaring light. Such will gladly contemplate an author in humble imitation, as we look without pain upon the sun in the water. Every writer has his use.
Every writer has her use. Sometimes the use of my writing is merely my own personal joy in finding the right words to wrap around my meanings. Sometimes my words become the perfect words to describe an experience for someone else. I must also contemplate the fact that not everyone is a writer. It is hard for me to picture since written words are so integral to my thinking and because the majority of people with whom I spend time are writers in some capacity. But there are out there people for whom words are difficult. There are people who depend upon writers to give words to their experiences. There are people for whom discovering the perfect words is a godsend because they can’t make the words themselves. Sometimes my words end up being those perfect words. This always astounds and awes me. It is not like I have given a gift, but more like a gift passed through me and I am merely touched by the passage. And so I scribble in the hopes that I will be similarly touched again as my words touch others.
And as I write, I discover things I did not realize I knew. I began this entry to talk about a set of perfect words which encapsulated my reasons for blogging, but in the process of writing I have discovered whole vistas of reasons that are not contained in the quote about capturing small stories. Already the words are no longer perfect.
But they are still good, and I will borrow them from time to time as I am speaking or writing about blogging. When I do, I will credit Doyle for writing them which is the only gift I can give him in return for the lovely words he shared with the world at large. I do not know if the rest of Doyle’s book will prompt as strong an emotional response as his prologue about writing, but I look forward to finding out.