Why Write

My sister telephoned me many years ago and asked, “What are you doing?”

“Writing stories no one reads,” I answered.

She was amazed. Why would I work so hard on such a thankless task? She didn’t realize that I figure out life by putting it on paper. That is how I understand the meaningless, hurtful things that I cannot control and the marvelous gifts that fall in my lap. Someone asked me “Why do you write?” and I answered, “Why do you breathe?”

Some people play with footballs and hockey sticks. Others play with recipes or computers. There are some who only play with other people. I have no interest in those kinds of games. I play with words.

I am a word-a-holic. I write sentences, notes, and observations on paper, on a computer, and in my head. I do it twenty-hour hours a day—when I walk my dogs, when I sit at my desk, and when I dream. Especially when I dream. Sometimes the words I write are published, but more often they are not. Occasionally I get paid, but I can never remember the amount I receive because my real compensation is what my words have created.

I live in my imagination because that is where I feel at home. The real world with traffic jams and angry policeman, frustrated projects and nine-to-five jobs cannot touch me there.

The first time my mother read me a story, I composed another for her, one so real it made me laugh and cry a lot harder than I ever laughed when she taught me how to bounce a ball or cried when she forced me to finish my milk. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I could ramble on forever, but if my words didn’t say something to someone else, they only nourished me. Anyone who is a real writer knows that is the stuff of journals, reminders on the fridge, and verbal meanderings; however, it is not communication. I want … no, I need every sentence I write to be a bridge into someone else’s mind. That kind of composition takes work—a lot of revising, a lot of deep thinking, and a lot of painful cutting.

My first poem was published when I was ten years old. It was about a lamp post. But it told my readers a lot more than that. It told them we shared a human need to cast a light on where we are in our world. That is why it was put into a book.

As the years went on (and there have been more than seventy-five of them), I wrote for anyone who would read my thoughts and understand what they meant. I sent out millions of messages to the world in the form of features, reviews, letters, columns, entertainments, greeting cards, short stories, and, finally, novels. I have written eleven of those. I sent one of them to every publisher in this country three times under three different titles, and not one company bothered to send me anything more than an impersonal rejection slip. When I finally published Starving Hearts myself, I thought it was a waste of time and money. To my surprise, it has sold more than six thousand copies and still sells today.

These days I still write in all those forms and I have added comedy routines and song parodies to the mix. People call me a performer now, but I am no such thing. I am a writer. That is who I will always be.

This is what I have learned from all these years of putting words together, all the millions of rejection slips and the tears they bring, the joys of that one acceptance that spurred me on: You can be paid a million dollars for words that came from your head instead of your heart, and that money is dross. But when you are walking on the beach and someone takes your hand and says “I read your book and it was me,” you have succeeded. When someone says, “Your words gave me the courage to live MY dream,” you have discovered heaven.

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