Why Do I Write?
Posted by Guest Writer in 
by Julie Garcia
This is the question I find myself contemplating way too often recently. And by recently, I mean for the last year or so. Recently, because graduation was looming and I was still trying to figure out what to do with myself. Or recently, because I got a quill tattoo to acknowledge my insatiable love for the written word and the fact that I wanted to be forever reminded of it regardless of what I was doing or not doing with my life. Not that I should need a reminder. But you know, I’m also 21 and tattoos are cool.
Okay, let’s pretend I didn’t just say I was 21 because now you are probably rolling your eyes at my naivety. Which you’d be doing rightfully so. I am naïve. I’m also a lot of other things.
Getting back to my point, Why do I write? I’ve started a running list of reasons. And by a running list, I mean a fragmented cluster of words that I tie together to better understand this sensation I get whenever I write. Whenever I “pour,” as I like to call it. So I thought I’d share that with you all today. It’s been helping me when I get stuck. It inspires me a little. If I can’t come up with anything new, I go to the list and try to add to it. I can usually at least do that:
- I write between shallow breaths and pieces of air that tighten up at different intervals.
- I write because the words pull me out from under any heaviness of the heart or they lead me to better burdens.
- I write to get over the sharp spite lodged in my throat and I cover it with heaps of colored words that all taste different unless they taste the same.
- I write, in thick, pulsing rhythms that beat into my eardrums and lounge there for as long as they’re welcome.
- I write in splinted fragments that toss themselves out of my chest in heated syllables and panting keyboard strokes.
- I write because I know no other way to unclench the acrid taste stuck between my gums.
- I write to rid myself of the nagging afterthought that I long to override with new feelings, new people, new love.
- I write because it is how I unravel even the dustiest corners of my conscious.
- I write because this is how I will my words to life.
Julie Garcia is a logophile who enjoys occasional bursts of passion and practices overflowing sincerity. She wants to magnify all the absurdity of the world, hold it over her head and shine a little light upon it.
This is a wonderful article. I am 23 and attempting to start writing again. It is overwhelming sometimes to sit down and “pour”. I am trying to make it more of a habbit. Writing focuses me. Writing sorts my head while I am awake, like dreaming does when I sleep.
I really resonated with your last reason, “I write because this is how I will my words to life.”