Thank you, Alex. As a brilliant and prolific author, I identified with this essay. Indeed, people often ask me why I write. “Daniel,” they beg. “Why do you write?” “What inspires you?” “What compels you?” “How are you able to maintain such a consistently high quality of output, particularly during these unprecedented times?” And to these people, I say: If you cut me, I bleed ink. My skin is parchment. My eyes are full stops. My ears are question marks. My fingers are em-dashes. My toes are en-dashes. My colon is a colon.
No surprise that others have preceded you. "Why I write" — an essay by George Orwell, written in 1946 after Animal Farm and before 1984. His reasons were summed up in a crib-sheet site as:
"1) egoism; 2) aesthetic enthusiasm; 3) historical impulse; and 4) political purpose.
Egoism is the desire to be thought clever, be talked about when alive, and remembered after death.”
30 years later, in 1976, Joan Didion, on the same subject, began by evoking Orwell, and wrote, "During those years [as a student at Berkeley] I was traveling on what I knew to be a very shaky passport, forged papers: I knew that I was no legitimate resident in any world of ideas. I knew I couldn't think. All I knew then was what I couldn't do. All I knew then was what I wasn't, and it took me some years to discover what I was.
Thank you, Alex. As a brilliant and prolific author, I identified with this essay. Indeed, people often ask me why I write. “Daniel,” they beg. “Why do you write?” “What inspires you?” “What compels you?” “How are you able to maintain such a consistently high quality of output, particularly during these unprecedented times?” And to these people, I say: If you cut me, I bleed ink. My skin is parchment. My eyes are full stops. My ears are question marks. My fingers are em-dashes. My toes are en-dashes. My colon is a colon.
No surprise that others have preceded you. "Why I write" — an essay by George Orwell, written in 1946 after Animal Farm and before 1984. His reasons were summed up in a crib-sheet site as:
"1) egoism; 2) aesthetic enthusiasm; 3) historical impulse; and 4) political purpose.
Egoism is the desire to be thought clever, be talked about when alive, and remembered after death.”
30 years later, in 1976, Joan Didion, on the same subject, began by evoking Orwell, and wrote, "During those years [as a student at Berkeley] I was traveling on what I knew to be a very shaky passport, forged papers: I knew that I was no legitimate resident in any world of ideas. I knew I couldn't think. All I knew then was what I couldn't do. All I knew then was what I wasn't, and it took me some years to discover what I was.
"Which was a writer.
"By which I mean not a 'good' writer or a 'bad' writer but simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper.” [https://www.nytimes.com/1976/12/05/archives/why-i-write-why-i-write.html]
You’re in good company. I expect, in a couple of years, a 50th anniversary tribute to Joan Didion.