Why I Write | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Why I Write | Previous Challenge Entry
By David Stewart
01/14/07
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Why do I write? I’m not sure I know the answer. Some may write because they know something the rest of us don’t and want to pass their knowledge on. Some may write to persuade us to agree with their point of view on a particular subject. I think I may have done that once or twice. Others may write because they love the sound of stringing words together like a poet.

I suspect most, like me, write because they must. To paraphrase A. W. Tozer, "Writers must write because if they don’t they feel like they would die." I write because I have to. I get ideas, stories, opinions, whatever in my head and I have to write them to relieve myself of the continual thinking on the matter.

If it’s a story I hear it in my mind over and over, making changes, additions until I feel I won’t be able to think about anything else until I write it out. Even if I don’t want to think about it just plays itself in my mind until I write it down. If it’s an idea I must write to organize my thoughts.

The best stories seem to write themselves inside my head. It’s as if they have a life of their own. The funniest thing happened in that regard when I wrote a story once for the Writing Challenge. As I wrote it I found it really sad and found myself crying about how sad the main character was and laughing at myself for crying about a character I was creating! I found that extremely funny. I thought ‘what baby!’ I must be more sentimental than I imagined. But then my oldest daughter read it and handed it back to me crying and my oldest son, after reading it, said “Dad it took every bit of willpower I had to not start crying when I read that!” So maybe I wasn’t such a baby but I still thought it odd that I could actually feel so sorry for a character when I was creating his thoughts, his situation, etc.

Sometimes I write for pleasure, as a form of therapy maybe. There are times when it’s not so much that I feel I will explode if I don’t get out of whatever I feel I must write but it is a replacement for having someone to bounce ideas off of.

Occasionally I write to challenge myself to see if I can get across a certain feeling or emotion from the reader.

The best use of writing may be when we worship as we write. It could be when you are writing to The Lord or about Him. To paraphrase Tozer one more time “We can judge whether a thing, a song, a book whatever is good or not by this: does it push one closer or father from God?” If our writing whether it is fiction, nonfiction or a journal brings others closer to God then we do well.

Let us acknowledge the LORD; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth. Hosea 6:3 NIV

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