A fiction writing professor I had in college said that the above is the only appropriate answer, for a writer, to the question “Why do you write?”

I write because I must.

I do not write for fame and fortune. I do not write to be liked. I do not write because it makes me happy, or because it entertains my friends. I do not write for other people.

I write for me.

Because I must.

I read some other blogs that create in me a sense of blog envy. The prose is rich, nuanced, magnificent. At times, I feel foolish spouting my little ditties about local music and the Catholic church and what I ate for lunch last Tuesday (okay, I made that last one up. But you know what I mean) when others are writing these beautiful evocative stories and posting them for the world to enjoy.

Funny thing about writing. I started this blog about two years ago, but didn’t really write with much regularity until last October…when my world turned upside down and everything I thought I knew was wrong. I poured my heart out in those posts. My pain flowed through my fingertips, onto the blog page. It was cathartic. Cleansing. It was deeply personal.

But somehow, in some strange way, it was not nearly as deeply personal as my fiction (and in the rare instances that I write it, creative nonfiction). If I’ve shared that with you, well, then you know you’re not just anyone…this, more than anything, involves baring the deepest reaches of my soul.

I just started reading “The Time Traveler’s Wife” and noticed the little blurb on the back cover that says “This is her first novel.” I wonder. I wonder how many unpublished novels, beginnings, scraps of stories, are tucked away in a file on her computer titled “story ideas,” in a spiral-bound notebook beside her bed, on a legal pad in her desk drawer…I just wonder.

I write…because I must.