Why I write, an introduction

I've noticed several blogger friends in the past few weeks pondering aloud on their blogs why they blog and whether or not anyone really cares about what they have to say. The first question is something I think about a lot. I mean, blogs are weird concepts, right? Or at least personal blogs are. You put little bits or really big bits of yourself out there for the whole world to read and then sort of hold your breath and half-shut your eyes as you wait for the comments to come in. Usually they're all positive, but sometimes there's that asshat out there that just isn't feeling too good about themselves and wants to make sure you're in the same boat.

I digress.

There's a project called Why We Write that I know some of you have heard of. It's a blog of essays about why writers, famous and otherwise, well, you know. Write. I have a number of different writing projects going on in my life from the tippy top of the professional scale all the way down to my own private writings, so I've never felt I could sum up why I write in one simple essay.

But after seeing so many bloggers question their own motivations, I felt like I wanted to share with the world why I write. I had to justify my blogging existence to the Modern Ex several times (even though The Modern Gal blog was his idea to begin with -- but I won't hold that against the MG), and that forced me to think hard about why I kept doing it and to come up with some definitive answers that I felt might make sense to him.

Writing is so fundamentally important to me as a human being. To know why I write is to know me better -- if you care about that sort of thing. (In a response to the second half of that initial question -- whether anyone cares about what we write -- Generally the answer is yes, people by nature are nosy. That's why my blog hits shot through the roof the day I first wrote about the breakup. But even on the occasion when the answer is no, who cares? Don't write for them. Write for you.)

So, I'm going to do a series of posts on the different reasons of why I write. There's not going to be any regularity to the series; just whenever it strikes my fancy to do a why I write post, I will. Maybe I'll only end up writing a couple before I get bored with it, but I'm going to go ahead and doubt that will be the case. I find that my reasons for writing evolve and change over time, and I never seem to get bored thinking about them. (And for archiving purposes, they'll all have a 'writing exercise' tag.

I realize my reasons might not be of much interest to many people, but I guess my hope is you'll find your own reason for writing in one of my posts. Or maybe you'll be inspired to write about your own reasons for writing. We all have a reason, right?