25 Reasons I Write

By Judith Ford

1. Writing makes me feel whole.
2. Writing wakes me up.
3. I write to find out what I’m really feeling.
4. I write to tell the truth without caveats.
5. Writing is a reliable companion.
6. Writing creates structure in the midst of emptiness.
7. When I write I am nobody but myself.
8. When I write I take up all the available space.
9. Writing is one of the few things I, all by myself, own.
10. When I was a young woman and very alone, writing literally saved my life.
11. When I was 10 and wrote my first short stories, it got me a lot of attention.
12. I like saying to myself, “I am a writer.”
13. Writing always has new things to teach me.
14. I write because I made a commitment to finish this damn book and it isn’t done yet.
15. I write because of people like Tennessee Williams, Annie Dillard, Russell Banks, Louise Gluck and Michael Ondaatje. To name but a few.
16. I write because I have always loved words.
17. I write because I am reasonably adept at it and the competence feels good, like using a trained muscle.
18. I write so that I can say more of what I want to say than anyone I know would ever be willing to listen to.
19. I write because if I didn’t I think my head might blow up from all the stuff that rises up and blows around in there.
20. I write because every now and then words pop into my head and I think, yes, that is exactly right, and I don’t want to forget.
21. I write to bear witness to life. Mine, other people’s, birds and dogs and the ugly wolf spider that showed up inside the seatbelt pad in my car.
22. I write because I always wanted to be a dancer, singer, actor, poet. And now that I’m almost 60, writing is the one I still have time to get really good at.
23. I can’t imagine not writing.
24. I write because really I have always had way too much performance anxiety to act or sing or dance. Writing happens in solitude; the audience comes later and by then, I can stand it.
25. I write because I have found I really enjoy being with other writers. You are my kind.

About writing, Judith says: I have been writing close to forever. Since I was in grade school and wrote fantasy stories about my Giant Flemish rabbit, Dynamite.

As I write this I am alone in a cabin on the Lake Michigan shore, with my dog, Pericles. This is what it takes for me to dive as deep as I need to work on my book, Fever of Unknown Origin. It is supposed to be springtime but today the wind is icy and hard pellets of snow sweep across the beach. All of this, plus the 5000 tunes on my ipod and the fire in the fireplace help me be still enough, help me be strong enough, to work and rework the 600+ pages of manuscript that I’ve brought with me.

The book is a memoir, with multiple story lines – about my own experience with a near-fatal illness, my mother’s stroke and eventual death, my father’s death by Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease – interwoven with anecdotes of family history. It’s a book about coping, about building structures and having them torn down, going on anyway, surrendering sometimes to the undertow, fighting back, waking up, going back to sleep even after multiple vows never to miss another second of eyes-wide-open life.

 Lake Michigan Shoreline With Pericles, April 9th, 2007, photo © 2007 by Judith Ford. All rights reserved. 

–related to Topic post, WRITING TOPIC – 25 REASONS I WRITE

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25 Reasons I Write

1. I don’t know why I write but I’ve built my whole life around it.
2. I write to keep myself alive. I can’t not write.
3. I write because I have something to say, a story to tell.
4. I write because if I don’t it feels like a million cactus pricks are sticking it to my insides.
5. I write to give something back to the world.
6. I write so I don’t say something I’ll regret.
7. I write to make my life have meaning to me.
8. I write to be in the circle of other writers, part of the legacy of other writers, in the lineage of other writers.
9. I write because I love the taste, touch, and smell of books and the lives of the writers who wrote them.
10. I write to practice writing, to feel the words dance on the page.
11. I write because I’ve been called to write my whole life – I can’t ignore it any longer.
12. I write because I love writing.
13. I write because when I dive smack dab into the middle of a piece, everything else in the world drops away.
14. I write to keep myself company.
15. I write to stick it to the Monkey.
16. I write to feel the uncomfortable edges and the vacuous spaces in-between.
17. I write because it feels holy to me.
18. I write because lost is a place and writing is the map.
19. I write because the screaming inside wants to be heard and I believe in what she’s trying to tell me.
20. I write because it helps structure my life.
21. I write because fear sneaks in at all hours of the day and night.
22. I write to keep the creative juices alive.
23. I write because there is no other high like it. There is also no other low.
24. I write because when I ramble around in the insanity of my brain – out on the page springs something sane.
25. I write to be true to myself. I write to live well. I write to be free. 

Monday, January 29th, 2007 

-related to post, WRITING TOPIC – 25 REASONS I WRITE

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25 Reasons I Write

1. I write to be able to say something
2. I write to have the voice I didn’t used to have
3. I write instead of shouting, but sometimes I also shout
4. I write to do
5. I write to be
6. I write to live with others, to be with them and not just sit around talking about the stupid teacher at my kid’s school, which is what a group of mothers did this morning as we waited in the library for our kids to take a test
7. I write to clarify statements such as the above, which is to say I write so I have something to do other than bitch and moan and gossip
8. I write to gossip, although when you write out your gossip to people who don’t even know who it is you’re gossiping about, it’s no longer gossip
9. I write gospel, my own
10. I write to own my life
11. I write to live
12. I write to vent
13. I write to rest
14. I write to get on fire
15. I write to practice the art of not editing
16. I write to tell a story about someone important to me
17. I write to have something I can do anywhere, anyplace, like those women who knit and the others who carry prayer or rosaries
18. I write as a way to be close to God
19. I write as a way to be close to everyone in my life that I’ve ever loved or even hated and emotions in between
20. I write to capture memory
21. I write to let go of memory; isn’t this a quote I just saw last night in the documentary Stone Reader?
22. I write so that I can fall in love with myself, and then get mad at myself for falling in love with myself
23. I write for the same reasons I draw or doodle, it keeps my hand moving
24. I write as a way to practice my spirituality
25. I write to give something to someone, who I don’t know, maybe you.

-from Topic post, 25 Reasons I Write

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WRITING TOPIC – 25 REASONS I WRITE

Countdown to Taos. Keeping it simple, short, sweet.

List 25 reasons you write. They don’t have to all be serious. Give yourself room to explore. Surface or deep, snorkel or scuba, dive in.

Walk in the mist – get wet.

-posted on red Ravine, January, 26th, 2007

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