Why Everyone Should Write

This month marks just over one year since I embarked on this journey of writing regularly. Within that period of time I have written just over 120 articles between the Substack and Medium platforms.

A lot of the articles I have written?—?mostly birthed from the first few months of this trip?—?are embarrassingly diabolical to read. Filled with words and phrases reflecting a gullible writer’s insecure plea for approval and attention. Most of them, however, are rather pleasing to read?—?or at the very least, not cringeworthy to read.

Then there are the special few that are perplexingly wondrous to read?—?leaving me to wonder what possessed me to be able to write with such posture and quality at the time.

All of these personal judgements, however, are by definition?—?subjective. And regardless of the perceived quality of each individual article, I conclude that there is no journey quite as revelatory and calming as the literary one that I had underwent this past year. Every single one of the articles written, from the horrid ones to the proudest ones, are valuable individual pieces in the scaffolding of this year-long textual journey. It is from this spirit?—?this perspective?—?whereby I wish to show to you, and to hopefully convince you, why you too should embark on your own writing journey.

Orwell’s Reasons

In his 1946 essay titled Why I Write; George Orwell illuminates four powerful motivations for writing. The first motivation is borne out of what he calls (1) Sheer egoism: the desire to be heard, to be remembered, to seem intelligent, to prove people wrong, and so on. One can also write due to (2) Aesthetic enthusiasm: an adoration for words and sentences?—?not only in the way they sound, but also in the way they look. A third reason is to write from (3) Historical impulse: to write for the purpose of recording facts for future reference. Finally, one can write for a (4) Political purpose: Mr. Orwell uses the word “political” in the widest sense possible here?—?not merely in a governmental sense. Political writing simply means writing in order to express one’s thoughts, perspectives or opinions on a subject. Any subject.

Mr. Orwell is astute in identifying these four powerful motivations. But I argue that these motivations will not reveal themselves to you very clearly before the act of regular writing itself. One can only discover these motivations through the act of putting pen to paper (or finger to keyboard, as it were). In regularly writing one will naturally find out?—?through direct felt experience?—?which of the four buckets (or combination of buckets) one belongs to.

Within my own literary path, I have discovered my homes at some combination of the 1st (Sheer egoism), 2nd (Aesthetic enthusiasm) and 4th bucket (Political purpose). The proportion by which each motivation drives me varies from article to article, but they probably average out at a 30–40–30 proportion (30% ego, 40% aesthetics, 30% political).

Impersonally Personal

In his cleverly titled book SeinLanguage; the great comedian, writer, and avid car collector Jerry Seinfeld explained to his readers why he loved driving and collecting cars so much.

“When you are driving, you’re outside and inside, moving and completely still, all at the same time. I think that’s something.”

I remember smiling at this neat observation. It so perfectly reflects the nature of writing. One of the feelings that often hinders people from writing is the fear of judgement from potential readers. Judgement of being seen as overly sensitive, painfully narcissistic, overtly pompous, and so on. And understandably so. Writing is indeed an act of presenting oneself to the world through the medium of text, words, and language. And in doing so, one can feel a certain level of imposter syndrome through asking oneself “Who the hell am I to express my opinions? Who would care about what I have to say?”

But echoing Mr. Seinfeld’s conception of driving a car, writing provides a similar experience of being both outside and inside at the same time. You are able to present yourself out there to the cold and indifferent world whilst still benefiting from the warmth of anonymity. Unlike other forms of expressions such as acting, or singing, or dancing, one does not have to expose so much of oneself so as to be cripplingly worried about the judgement of others. Nobody needs to see your wretched face, or hear your hideous voice, or discern your existentially awkward movements when reading your writing. There is a refreshing freedom in this anonymity that has been granted to all writers.

And yet, even within the comforting anonymity and distance enjoyed by the writer, he is still able to be intimately close to the reader, precisely because he is able to temporarily occupy— and become?—?the voice inside the reader’s mind. In a very real sense, I am inside your head right now—in spite of the fact that we may never physically cross paths with each other for the remainder of our lives. For all you know, I may have deceased by the time you read this. And yet here I am, occupying your mental state at this moment, sharing with you my thoughts and opinions on writing.

Such is the miracle of writing. It is tantamount to such a perplexing long-distance relationship not merely through space, but also through time. It is obviously unknowable to me whether or not someone would read these words in a hundred or a thousand years from now, but in writing this I have at least afforded such possibility. And what a mind-bending possibility that is.

Mirror, Mirror on the?Page

Even the least shallow amongst us look at ourselves in the mirror daily. As a consequence, we are all intimately aware of the realities of our physical bodies. Especially that of our face. That crease in one’s forehead, the shape of one’s mouth, the compactness of one’s head of hair?—?such is the detail that we are aware of with regards to our physicality. But one aspect of ourselves that we cannot see in the mirror is the reality of our own mind. Our thoughts and opinions about the world and about ourselves. No physical mirror can reflect a non-physical reality?—?but writing can.

I am not sure if other writers experience this as well, but whenever I read one of my past articles, I can distinctly remember how I felt?—?and therefore who I was?—?at the time of writing that article. In one article, I sound like an insecure child trying desperately to entertain the reader. In another, I felt bored and apathetic towards the subject?—?thus merely spewing out words to fill the pages. In another, I felt confident and was very expressive on the message I was trying to convey?—?displaying such surety with my words and such ease with my stance.

Each piece of writing, in effect, acted as a mirror that reflected not my physical state, but my mental state at the time of writing. It is certainly true that you can know a lot about a person by reading his or her writings. It is therefore true that writing is an act of directly discovering for yourself?—?about yourself.

I strongly believe that this is true even with writings of fiction. Self-discovery through writing does not only happen through writing about one’s personal daily affairs or one’s personal political opinions. For even through writing a work of fiction (such as a fantasy novel), or writing about the economy, or writing factually on Greek history?—?one’s personalities, values, and views will eventually seep through the words.

If you write regularly and for an extended period of time, you will very clearly see just exactly who you are through the myriad of your work. Because no one (unless you are psychopathic) can continuously lie to themselves in such an effortful manner for that long. Your writings will invariably reveal to yourself?—?and to the world?—?just exactly who you are inside your head, for good and for bad.

It takes almost no effort to reflect your physical state, as it is simply a matter of standing in front of a physical mirror. We do that all the time. But it takes more effort to reflect your mental state, as it requires thousands of earnestly written words to reflect the nuanced texture of your mind through a literary mirror.

Every single word one writes is an individual pixel on the screen of one’s identity. And I wholeheartedly believe that the more words one writes, the clearer that picture will be.