Why Do We Write?

Why do we write? Why do I write?

It's a question I find myself asking more and more as writers block slowly gnaws away at my creative mind. Why do we write?

Why do I find that as the days go on, my need, my want to write increases, growing so large it feels as if my wind pipe is about to be closed off and will eventually result in my death?

Others go about their lives feeling absolutely no desire to even pick up a pen, let alone put themselves through the gruesome venture that is writing a story - so why do I long to put myself through the pain that is never being fully satisfied with any piece of work?

It's relatively masochistic if I do say so myself. I have folders upon folders of works abandoned - stories that never even got past the first sentence and stacks of unfinished thoughts that are left to be unfinished and never returned to at all. Then there are the ideas that I get excited about, ones that leave me breathless, but that never get completed or even started because I can't grasp at the words to even being roping in the beauty of what I see in my mind.

So why do it?

Why torture myself with failing over and over again?

Because, I was simply born with the longing to put myself through this masochistic art. I love it. I crave it. I need it. If I don't continue putting pen to paper or finger tips to keyboard I'll cease to exist - there with be no more me. Writing is my fire, the passion behind my eyes.

It's almost unexplainable, the longing us writers feel to throw every inch of ourselves into a novel. Almost, but I suppose that's a writers job - to find the words that show every bit of life in the clearest, most beautiful way we can.