'Why I do what I do' Blog Tour

It's always a good idea to stop what you're doing from time to time and ask yourself why on earth you're doing it, so I'm really grateful to Heidi Chandler for inviting me on this blog tour. Heidi is a busy mother and writer, whose first book, Holding Avery: A Memoir was published by MP Publishing in 2014. Please take a look at her fabulous website here:  http://heidichandler.com/



So why do I do what I do?

(i.e. for the purposes of this blog tour, write). I was mulling it over from behind a pile of clean laundry this afternoon and got so absorbed by possible answers that I practically welded a tea towel to the ironing board. This is a boundless question. If I gave my inner-narcissist free reign I could spend the rest of my life musing about why I write, but for the sake of everyone's sanity, not least my own, I will try to be concise.



Hmm....Where was I?

I write to escape...

When I was a kid I loved reading books because they provided me with places to run away, hide and have adventures. When Lucy opens the wardrobe door onto Narnia, it always seems to me that symbolically she is opening the front cover of a story book. When you open up a book you are opening a door onto another world, and when you step inside you do so knowing that anything might happen. If that's what a book is - a door into another world - then how could I not want to write one?

By the way, when I say that as a kid I wanted to 'run away' and 'hide' I don't mean that I was unhappy in the real world. Not at all - I grew up in a wonderful family and I had a wonderful childhood. But I was very shy, and interacting with the real world was sometimes an effort, especially during my teens. That's where fictional characters came into their own for me: I could love them, hate them, know them, be them, through and through, even if I could only raise a unsmiling little mumble in my dealings with actual flesh-and-blood people. I bet a lot of writers were once introverted children in need of sanctuary, who became addicted to the kind of companionship that only fictional characters can provide.


But I also write to communicate...

Yes, okay, it's fine for a shy child to seek refuge in her imagination. But if being a writer means spending your entire life in flight from reality, isn't that...well...a bit sad?

Ah, but you see, the moment I start turning my internal world into prose, it means I want to connect with other people. I may not necessarily realise that that's what I want, but it is. Fourteen year old Elizabeth may think that she would die a thousand deaths before she ever, ever, ever let anyone read her diary, but if that's really true then why is she writing it? Doesn't she actually fantasise about a kindred spirit discovering it, and reading it, and understanding her like nobody's ever understood her before...?

When I talk about exploring other worlds, I don't necessarily mean Fantasy Worlds with a capital F and a capital W.  All stories take you to a new world, even if they're set in your own home town among the kind of people you meet every day. The mind of a made-up character is as much another world as Narnia or Hogwarts, and fictional minds are the only kind of minds a writer can explore unreservedly, without fear that she might be trespassing or looking at things the wrong way. I couldn't turn a real person's mind inside out and shake it all about - it wouldn't feasible or morally right - but I can do it to a fictional character.

In other words, when I write I want to engage with my fictional creations at as a deep a level as possible, and then communicate what I find to other people. For me, that sums up the thrill of writing, and I hope it explains why I do what I do. It's a start, anyway.

Or, to put it more succinctly...

The psychologist D.W. Winnacott wrote that there is a conflict in most writers between two needs:

"The urgent desire to communicate, and the still more urgent need not to be found."

Now it's my turn to pass the baton on, and I would like to nominate Marguerite Madden to write about why she does what she does. Please take a look at her fantastic (musical!) website here: http://margueritemarkiemadden.simplesite.com/411391806

Marguerite Madden (Markie to friends and family) was born on August 19, 1975, in Midland, Texas. She married in 1994, and has two daughters.

In 2012, Markie published her first book, Once Upon a Western Way for e-reader platforms such as Nook, iPhone and Kobo.

The following year Markie was diagnosed with leukemia (AML), and was hospitalized far from home for treatment. During this time, she reconnected with Denise (Mercer) Blackwell, an old friend from high school who is also a published author who convinced her to publish in print and for Kindle e-readers through a web-based service called Create Space. Her book, Keeping a Backyard Horse, went live for print on September 1, 2014.

Markie is currently a member of an online writer's group called Scribophile, a group of writers dedicated to helping one another to improve their work.