why I write (& other stories)

I’ve pilfered the title of this post from one of George Orwell’s essays. I’d once studied an anthology of his writings in class, and I’d been drawn by the precision of his use of language: what he himself called his ‘facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.’ Though I scarcely agree with all his views expatiated in his various works, the straightforwardness of the intention behind “Why I Write” appealed to me both then and now. Orwell lists and elaborates on what he believes are the ‘four great motives for writing’, and while I can’t hope to emulate his characteristic lucidity (nor do I intend to), I thought I’d follow his example, supplemented by my own relationship with writing. 

(N.B I’ve just reread the first pages or two of the essay, and am now somewhat cowed by the prospect of trying to reproduce it, in however distant a fashion. I am convinced that I shall either fail miserably or end up mimicking his style of writing, as is often the unintentional consequence of my reading something. Hopefully neither.) 

Let’s begin.

From a relatively young age, I’ve kept a journal, or at least tried to. The other day I found what was probably my first, aged 10. A sample entry reads thus: 

Date: 15-12-11 (Thur)

Went to school – watched movie “Nativity”, finished JL biography, did PE gymnastics (trampoline!) and went to library, did class. @ Lunch emotional – Tara. Ed shouting. T crying. Last off bus – again! Tired. Went rock climbing. Piano lesson. Nothing much today. Tomorrow holidays & school half day. Excited!

On the whole, hardly promising in the way of artistic talent. But though lacking in literary flair and peppered with grammatical mistakes, this bygone diary is an indication of my early desire to record events. This impulse has since grown with me, becoming (or at least I like to think so) more refined in expression. I believe it stems from two things: first, the light-hearted intention of having something to look back on when I’m older; and second, the fear of forgetting. It may appear at first glance that these two are, if not identical, then exceedingly similar. Yet though the difference may be subtle, I think it is telling. The former is probably what motivated me as a child to pick up a pen and start the physical act of writing. The prospect of one day reading over diary entries from the past seemed like a rather fun idea – more so, at least, than writing out of a duty to document my life, which spawns from fear. Though I may have been aware that I wouldn’t remember this particular day, the thought hardly bothered me. Rather, making a record of events seemed a sensible sort of habit; it seemed something one should do, if only to elicit fond smiles of remembrance in the future.  

Yet now, looking back, I wonder whether this latter reason – fear – had been the underlying motive all along. It’s certainly a significant factor for my continuing to write today. Though I’m hardly old, I can’t escape how fickle and fleeting memory is; I forget everything from whether I locked the door after leaving the house to the facts from my history course that I crammed into my brain for two years at school. Even as a child, one of my biggest fears was losing my memory and forgetting who I was. This may seem an irrational fear for a ten-year-old, yet so it was; and while I didn’t consciously relate this to my impulse for documenting, it’s possible that it fed into it. Memory is precious and an unequivocal cornerstone of our identity. If we lost all of our memories, would we still be ourselves? Yet despite its crucial role in our mental make-up, memory is unreliable, adhering in its selectivity to criteria beyond coherence. While we may remember fragments, we don’t remember most of our lives: the mass of days and experiences that are responsible for who we are are lost to oblivion. This paradox intrigues me. Even the memories that we treasure become frayed from over-handling or time. The details blur and fade, and if we try to examine them more closely they dissolve, refusing to comply with our efforts. Writing is thus a means for me to capture small snatches of everyday life I might otherwise forget; it allows me to mitigate the numbing effects of time, or at least lends me the illusion of doing so. 

So far I have established two of my motives for writing: writing as a source of future amusement, and writing with the express intention of not-forgetting. My third motive in this vein concerns not events, but that which is intangible and therefore, in my opinion, harder to put into words: my thoughts and feelings. I consider myself an introspective person and I tend to think a lot. (Often unnecessarily so.) No matter how insignificant things may be in reality, I’ll often turn them over in my mind for long afterwards. Writing provides me with a medium of expression, but it further serves as a means by which I can distill my thoughts. I can easily spend an hour writing in my journal, trying to untangle and understand what I feel and how I think. Writing things down thus gives me an escape route out of the clutter in my head: it gives me consciousness.  

These reasons for writing are all inherently interconnected. We are always changing, even if we don’t realise it. It’s a gradual process; only when we are sufficiently far enough from the past can we look back and say that we’ve changed. The idea that one day I will be able to have an insight back into the functionings of my teenage mind appeals to me, as does the thought that these cogitations and random wanderings won’t be forgotten. When I read back over a diary written by my 12-year-old self, I was amused and not a little embarrassed by my then flamboyant way of writing. It was like reading through the thoughts of a different person, or else a long-lost childhood friend. It was hard to believe that I had written this, once upon a time. And yet it was remotely familiar. It kindled memories hidden under six years’ worth of unremembered days and reminded me of things and feelings I’ve long since forgotten. For a split second, I was able to see the world once more through the lens of a child. And so I wonder whether, in ten or fifteen years, I will have the same experience, reading back through my current journal. I want to be able to remember, when I’m older, how I thought and how I felt as an 18-year-old girl. I want to be able to look back – not just to stir the dregs of memory and smile down fondly at bygone days, but to acknowledge that this girl did, at some point, exist as she does now; even if she has since become changed. For I believe that the essence of writing is, in its own way, the immortalisation of life: its beauty, its ugliness, its mundanity in the details of the everyday. We cannot live forever, but our humanity, and our spirit, can endure through the written word. And this is why I write.