SaraOf course, I stole the title for this talk from George Orwell. One reason I stole it was that I like the sound of the words: Why I Write. There you have three short unambiguous words that share a sound, and the sound they share is this:
I
I
I
Of course, I stole this paragraph from Joan Didion. I stole it because I feel inspired by the potential of already existing ideas. My first experience with writing was with a word-by-word copy. I wasn’t in school yet and didn’t know how to write, but I had a diary from my grandparents. They gave one to me and one to my sister. They always gave us the same presents, just in different colors. My sister was 15 months smarter and knew how to use a diary. I saw her documenting her days and the joys she had, eventually, I asked her if I could copy. Well, I could. Ever since I have been carrying at least a piece of paper and a short pencil with me. I am documenting, observing, and writing all throughout the day and always have.
What I learned from my sister and her ideas is not solely about writing, but more about a kind of magic, that is beyond the production of a text or story. In the first sentence of my diary and each new entry was: ‘Dear Diary’. I addressed my texts to a figure, that neither had a body nor physical shape. But it was listening, answering, and structuring my feelings, oftentimes conserving the feelings, and providing room for them outside of my body.
Writing means expansion. It means expanding the personal space for inner processes, expanding connections, expanding thoughts, and thinking processes, and finally expanding creativity.
As I learned to write myself, I did not have to copy my sister’s words anymore. During my younger years, I found myself writing poems about the questions of the afterlife, song lyrics, and short stories. I considered writing to be something that I needed but did not have an idea then of how texts are society’s glue, the lubricating paste that nourishes social interactions, represents qualifications or education, and provide people with adventures that free their minds or elevate their inner world. I was only eighteen when I supported an alumnus with my writing skills. Totally naive, I was asked, and I wrote, but never had I considered my texts to be read before, and yet, I found myself producing a text for a scientific thesis. Hindsight, it was my pure curiosity, my natural relationship to writing that allowed me to not step away or anxiously deny myself to expand. It is somehow paradoxical, that the fact of having a reader for my text, lets me hesitate to finalize it-yes, it still does. I don’t know if I ever will, but I have not understood how to deal with this component, with the reader, the audience. When my text meets the reader, I am powerless to what will happen to my idea. Now, my text is on its own, meeting new minds.
When I put the first words on paper, it is the second step of the writing process. Before that, my mind already underwent thinking in all kinds of ways. I am not much of an inventor. What I am is a combiner. I combine ideas, connect concepts, and transfer existing ideas into different scopes. I know that many people search for the one shiny idea, for the breakthrough, but I had to acknowledge from early on, that my talents lay in observing dynamics and contexts. My mind is in need for things to make sense. Instead, if they don’t, I am stuck in flux. In this second step, my mind dictates my fingers what to put down. Usually, it is what some would call chaos, but I like to call it playground. Once I gave my thoughts a place, I feel as if all words laying in front of my eye become a magic puzzle: More things and ideas fit together and become one piece than I have assumed before. Right there, this is my quality time. I am in the present with my text, meeting its personality for the first time. And just as with real people I am curious which ways it will go and I am starting discussions and conversations with it, we do have a good time, sometimes saddest moments and sometimes hilarious. And like with people, there is the conflict of letting go, giving the other one space, in the hopes to be outgrown and still be remembered in its roots. It’s time to give the text an appearance that identifies it. Even if you do not read the words, you can still recognize what kind of text it is: scientific articles, song lyrics, poems, newspaper articles, blog articles, fairytales, novels, or copy content, they all follow a specific consensus, which is rather for the reader’s perspective than for me as a writer.
Certainly, as an author, I have several roles, from being a creative to being a gamechanger – a powerful position. And people know this. Writing is a craft that needs talent. I connect people through my texts, alter perspectives, and gift people with new ideas. Somehow, I don’t like to be called ‘author’, because it sounds like a job title as if it was a position, but through the patches of handling patience, facing rejection, dealing with self-consciousness, and walking the fine line of conflicting needs, I am just me, giving my everything to the process.
My best self-advice: Don’t listen too much, and yet, listen carefully.
Once I decide to be finished with a text, I let it go. Eventually, the reader perceives the text through his subjective filters. There is one aspect of literary theory, that I highly respect: The acknowledgment of the reader’s context and background. On top of that, even the timely context. Oftentimes, sci-fi stories were just another future telling. And here, again, a text has its realistic personality. Meeting somebody for the first, second, or third time is a different story. How do I know that? Once I am not the author anymore, I cannot be more than a reader myself, reconnecting with my creation from a different perspective.
The reason I write is that I need it. It is my instinct and my way to perceive a meaningful life. I hunger to extend and expand my time and space I have on this earth. I have found my craft to provide a sense of the world I live in. Words are my thing. My writings contain parts of me, let in the world to live by themselves and become re-created by others.
