Why we write

I haven’t done one of these in a long time. Just a simple blog post without hours of research, you know, the kind of stuff I actually started blogging for. Well, technically, I started blogging as some sort of retroactive justification of buying my first laptop back in 2009, but that’s beside the point. Either way, over these last few months, as I’ve been dealing with health issues, a protracted recovery, the year end at work and on-and off bouts of writer’s block, my mind has always come back to the same question: Why? Why do so many of us like to write?

For me personally, the answer is pretty straightforward: I simply like writing and it’s never been easier to publish your musings. But the question is bigger. There seems to be a never-ending stream of aspiring writers, even in this age of video and that laziest of mediums, the podcast. Why is that?

In my opinion it’s because, at the end, we’re all story tellers. If you think about it, our entire culture has evolved around exchanging stories. Even the most basic office gossip is, at its most fundamental level, just stories that happen to feature real persons rather than fictional characters. And that’s not a new development either. This tradition goes way back, far beyond the classical Roman fables or Greek tragedies that we in our western bias see as one of the foundations of our culture, way past the legends of the numerous warring states of China prior to the Qin dynasty, even beyond the epic of Gilgamesh, generally believed to be the oldest documented story in history. There is no reason to believe that this tradition started only with the advent of writing, although it should be noted that one of the oldest surviving piece of writing is not some epic story or juicy Mesopotamian gossip, but a complaint about perceived poor quality merchandise. Some things never change.

Archaeological diversions aside, storytelling seems to be a common thread throughout humanity’s history, through cultures with verbal and written traditions alike, all the way to whenever that first group of hominids made that transition from complex vocalisations to an actual language, with grammatical structures and all its other accoutrements, however that may have played out. And if you think about it, it makes sense that it would be. Life was hard for our early ancestors who more often than not found themselves on the top of the menu, rather than the food chain, living in a world that in many way was o far beyond their comprehension that it is almost indescribable. Huddled around meagre fires at night, these small bands of hunters and foragers would tell stories not only to pass the time and distract themselves from the darkness, but also to pass on lessons, tales of caution or simply to ease the tensions. When they met other groups, this exchange would happen on a bigger scale and as our ancestors, and later our own species began its rise to eventually become the dominant species on this planet, at least on land, this habit of telling stories evolved with us, the scope of the stories increased and new experiences were integrated.

Nowadays, we do not need to cower in caves or huddle around fires anymore. In seemingly no time at all, our species has transcended its humble beginnings to a point where we have far exceeded the need for pure verbal retellings. We can not only write our stories down but also share them not just with our local social group or tribe, but with the entire species, and in a matter of seconds. And even though our society has long since abandoned it’s nomadic roots and our priorities in life have changed drastically, that desire to tell stories, to share our experiences, is still there, indelibly woven into our collective memory as a culture. All of us want to tell the stories that we hold within ourselves, share our experiences and creativity. And while many keep these stories within their close social groups, for whatever reason, there re equally many who just want to go that one step further and go beyond that social circle. And modern technology has made that easier than ever before.

It probably won’t surprise anyone reading this that this urge is one of the driving forces behind my blog, just as it was the driving force behind my abortive creative writing attempts back during my school days. It’s what’s keeping me going despite low readership numbers and ever more pressing time concerns. And let me tell ya, it can be damn rewarding as well when your stories resonate with other people. So why not try it yourself?