"Why Do I Write" ~ Laure-Anne Bosselaar

WHY DO I WRITE ~ Laure-Anne Bosselaar

"Two years ago, I read Orhan Pamuk's Nobel Prize acceptance speech and so loved one particular part of it that I copied it in my journal. Here, very slightly edited, is his response – which, I feel, could also be mine and one so many writers would make theirs. (I did add – in italics -- one more reason I’d have given!) So, most respectfully quoting Orhan Pamuck:

The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. Perhaps I write because there is so much I want to sing and love. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy."

(Click here to read the whole speech.)