I had an epiphany the other day about my next writing project. I was driving. I was thinking about my errands, the dry cleaner, the special light bulbs, the pharmacy. I was thinking about a difficult call I had to make. I was thinking about my sister. In other words, I wasn’t thinking about what to work on next when it came to me: wait. I remembered that every one of my books started organically. I was seized with an idea and started writing. Some stuck, some didn’t. But I never made myself do anything. Why was I making myself crazy? I think the reason is I always feel lonely when I’m not working on a project. I think I started writing as a kid because I was lonely.
What makes your write?
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Betsy Lerner 
I usually hear a voice in my head and feel a scenario. I’ve just completed a major revision of a novel and I feel both free and bereft. My days are open and loose. It feels both good and scary but I do have 2 possible big projects looming. I’m giving myself a break and taking a rest until the ideas press upon me.
I got into the habit of writing because I thought it might make me somebody. I guess it does in a way.
Expression. There’s so much to see, digest and report. The question isn’t so much why, but how.
And what are special light bulbs? Do they turn on by themselves when you walk into a room? Do they talk to you suggestively and tell you how hot they are? Do they brag about their grades and how bright they are?
Prattling on with an emphasis on silliness might just be another reason I write.
What makes me write . . .
It started with reading. Most of my life I’ve identified with readers. I am bookish, and will always be a reader, yet at some point, I felt something was missing.
I read Kaye Gibbons’ book ELLEN FOSTER in 1990, and after decades of Stephen King worship, I realized not only did I have a new literary hero, my long ago declaration to write was re-ignited. I only needed the right book by the right author to consider it. Because of her work, I began. I can’t quite explain that – or how it became a compulsion. I was certainly determined to prove I could do it. (it helps to tell family who then hound you, “how’s that book coming along?” with sideways looks and smirks.)
She’s being inducted into the NC Literary Hall of Fame in October. I’ve invoked her name more times than I can count since I began writing, and am absolutely over the moon this is happening.
Ellen Foster also made a HUGE impression on me.
She’s such a master of voice and word economy. I hope this induction will open doors for her again.
We moved every 1-1/2 to 3 years when I was growing up, I was shy, so I wrote myself friends. I wrote out of loneliness. I wrote mostly poetry, then short stories. I read voraciously and thought a copy editor had the best job on the planet…next to an actual published author. I didn’t start believing I could be the author until I was in my 40s. Now I write because I love it, but what makes me write is the actual chance of success. Since 3rd grade I have been told by too many people to count that I should be a writer. I kept trying to tell them that I was a writer…that I am a writer…but what I want to be is an author. It has taken a long time to figure it out…I will never be a published author if I don’t try, so I write.
Wrote myself friends. Yes.
You are right about the line between writer and author. The question is whether one keeps going without getting published. I always think about Emily Dickinson. That burning.
I write because I usually have something to say and usually people (and a few newspaper editors) want to read it. I say “usually” because after over 35 years of doing what I do my well of ideas/subjects/experiences had just about run dry. Still at it though. But now (by choice) I’m off a weekly deadline. It’s like being let out of jail. Yee Ha I’m free but WTF. A writing life without pressure takes getting used to.
“What makes you write?”
I first wanted to be a writer when I was a little boy. I wanted to cast the magic of written stories, and to please others thereby, and be a center of attention and adulation.
But I didn’t write when I was a little boy. I was 11 when I started keeping a diary. I was terribly alone, no one to talk to, not really. That’s a pretty standard motive for keeping a diary in adolescence.
I wrote my first stories when I was 12. That was an expression of that little boy’s dream. To weave the web, to make the magic, to get the attention of readers. To be, if not the center, then some locus of attention and adulation.
I wanted to make my life matter, on terms that were my own, and those terms would come through writing. I knew this by the time I was 13. As the years went by, I would tell myself and sometimes others that my writing was about making some form of art, making my life into art.
Around the time I turned 40 I realized that all my artistic pursuits — my whole life! — were about being loved. That was my Rosebud, the irreparable loss, the major motivator. Such a realization can take the wind out of your sails, so you have to find another tack.
What makes me write? God? Fate? Painting myself into a corner? Burning every bridge along the long, lonesome highway? Hell, I don’t know, probably all of those. I write. It’s what I do. It’s who I am.
You had me at center of attention and adulation.
I’m glad you’re here.
I’ve been working on the same book for way too many years. What makes me write now is the effing knowledge that it’s now or never to FTF. Soon though. Very soon.
I have had no huge epiphany about the next book idea. Like you, I’ve found most ideas suddenly arrive when least expected, not when agonized about. I know it will happen, and all I can say is it can’t be soon enough. 😆
SHerry!! Nice to see you back. of course you will FTF.
I’m a journalist who never wrote publicly about myself, or had reason to do so. Until! Until. In 2021 I was the victim of a brutal random assault on my street that left me with a brain injury and in need of craniofacial reconstruction. About 30 months later I started writing, in real time, about the ongoing criminal case against my attacker, at Victim EY on Substack. The story has many facets: extreme mental illness, bail reform, life in a poor and violent city for haves and have-nots, safety-net failures, and, between victim and defendant, more X vs. Y conflict and contrast than I can summarize here. For me it’s been years of attending court hearings and listening to the defendant this and the defendant that, while I’ve had to stay silent. Some day in court I’ll tell my side. But for now, with the freedom to write, I feel as though I’m taking control. I know the truth. I get to tell my story.