Why I Write (journal entry)

I like how Joan Dideon put it when she said, "Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write almost entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear." That's true for me, too. Students tell me all the time, "I don't know what to write about." Neither do I. I just write. Freewriting is maybe the way I come up with the what that I'm going to write. I can't imagine how J.K. Rowling could plot out, before she wrote them, all seven Harry Potter books on napkins at a coffee shop. I also appreciate how Joan Didion admits to being "not in the least an intellectual." That's not the same as not in the least smart. I'm that way, too, and I remember images over facts, too, like what sweater I was wearing the day that Claudia Solt vomited all over me on her way to the pencil sharpener one morning in third grade. I remember the warmth of the liquid as it spread across my back. I don't remember the names of books I've read or movies I've seen. I can't remember more and more these days, but images I do remember. I write for the challenge of writing, and I find that I have more to say once I write enough to uncover them. I write to communicate, certainly, though I sometimes doubt my ability to deliver a cohesive message. I don't want to bore anyone or lose anyone, and I think that if I could write more succinctly, I'd avoid that and probably still communicate. In the interest of succinctness, then, I'll quit here.