The days have passed, full of themselves, and it has been hard to squeeze in time to post. When I let time go by like that without posting, I begin to wonder why I write here at all. That’s how it works for writing, and I imagine for any creative endeavor. Life on earth does not lend itself to creativity; it sucks it away.
Writing this blog must come second to writing on my novel. I write on the novel every day, yet rarely does a day pass that I don’t ask myself why I am writing it, too. I took a day off from writing anything, and oh, my, the joy of extra hours to read!
Yet…
This is a hurricane lily. They appear all over the area at this time of year. What caught my eye about this one is that it came up, alone, in an unkept area along a tree-lined, brush-filled fence row, where all manner of dead house plants and bushes have been thrown. I saw it quite by accident.
And this oxalis bloom, totally out of season, just popped up.
If a writer begins to wonder why she writes, she might as well ask why a flower blooms.
Curtiss Ann Matlock 
7 responses to “Why Write?”
Hi Curtiss Ann,
Why do you write here? Because the flowers bloom, for sure….because your creation here makes it a better garden world for me….a more hopeful writer’s room for me….a congenial granmotherly get-to-gether for me…..a light of belly-laughter for me who needs to lighten up….a respected soul-journer for me….a pause in my momentum since my words stopped flowing….a discovery horizon for me.
Gosh, Curtiss Ann, I guess you write….for me!
and lots of other me’s. Love, sue
LikeLike
Thanks for your thoughtful writing. I have gone through quite a stressful time and my reading fiction like yours has got me through.Escaping problems for a time makes it possible to get a more optimistic perspective and keeps me going.I enter someone else’s mindset and it’s like priming the pump to get thinking and problem solving again.Cheers,Peggy
LikeLike
Peggy– so true and very well said. There’s enough depressing in real life without reading more. I want to ’tilt the mirror upward’, as Greer Garson once said, in both my writing and my reading.
>________________________________
LikeLike
What a great way to put it! Point well taken.
LikeLike
Thank you, dear Jo. We write because that’s how we’re made. Last night I was tired, really wanted to just read P.G. Wodehouse :), but I could not help writing the thought that had been plaguing me all day. Thanks for reading it!
CurtissAnn
>________________________________
LikeLike
Very nice finish to glum thoughts which frequently cross my mind–even while I’m pecking away at pieces about daily life which have nothing to do with grandiose projects such as novels or articles for publication. I write about experiences in the distant past, or just this morning; those in which I had some personal stake, but I’m not writing history; they’re merely reminiscences of an old man triggered by something recently read, something written by others.
For example, this morning quite early I awoke with Joan Didion and James Jones on my mind. Before falling asleep I’d been reading in Joan’s White Album about her tour, in 1977, of Schofield Barracks on Oahu shortly after the death of James Jones. In her essay she visits the scenes of Jones’s novel, mentions the character in From Here to Eternity, and comments on how true to the life of professional soldiers of the pre-Pearl Harbor era they were. Her affection for those characters and apparently for Jones–whom she never met–comes through in her essay evoking nostalgia in me. I was an admirer of both Jones and his works and a lover of Joan Didion’s books–both fiction and journalism (which in her case they seem to meld). In all of her non-fiction I see the settings and characters which became novels; she wasted nothing.
Often I read your stuff, like the post above and wonder: “How will she use this later?” And I focus on a word, such as “fence row” and wonder if your readers know what it means from their own experience of clearing the brush and young trees.from fence rows in order to repair the fences.
LikeLike
Old Mack– you pay me the highest compliment to visit my blog and share your written thoughts. I see nothing less grand in your writing than in attempting a novel or article of publication. I want to be published, but today I have learned that a writer writes, and it is not about publication. I’m writing my novel for myself, for the very first time in my life, and I’m excited about that.
You give me another reason to write in the blog (hope to remember when I’m tired and lost)–when I write here, I very often receive the gift of connecting with others of like minds and hearts. For a deep introvert as I am, that is a great gift indeed. And thank you for mentioning Joan Didion. I must read her work.
Yes, for me anyway, everything is used. I write to express my feelings, and to find what those feelings mean to me. In my current writing, I am falling again in love with the South, the place of my youth. Did I mention that I lived five years as a very young child in Tampa Bay area? I’m sure it is in my bones, as is everything for us before the age of six.
>________________________________
LikeLike