Writing for yourself or ...

[gauchecritic]

Ooh ooh, you've just given me the answer to Charley's thread

...my reply to a PM.

To create emotion. Doesn't matter whether the emotion is in yourself or another reader (extremely gratifying to be mailed or get PCed even if you created an emotion that wasn't intended in the reader.)

Ire and resentment are poor substitutes but they are still emotions/feelings that you engendered in someone else by what you wrote. Be it a 20,000 word sex trip or a 50 word reply to 'Your greatest accomplishment' thread.

Making people emote is touching them. Making yourself cry on re-reading or the satisfaction of writing 'The End' is touching your past.

Emotion, it's how you know you're alive.

 

[oggbashan]

Story Telling

Perhaps we write because we have a story to tell?

Maybe the story we post isn't the story we wanted to write, or THE story that we are aiming to tell, but it is a story.

Writing a story is an act of creation like any other work of art. The creation is only complete when the creator communicates to someone else, even if it is communicated from the creator as artist to the same person as reader (almost like the appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober).

Like artists in other media, often we are frustrated in the act of creation because we can't portray the exact conceptions that exist in our brains because the tools and conventions we use are limiting.

As far as I am concerned, the story I want to tell is beyond my ability to convey. I write, when I am writing seriously (and a lot of my posted work ISN'T serious), to tell as much of the story as I can. Sometimes I think a few of my stories show glimpses of what the real story might be.

I write because I am compelled to tell a story, however badly.

Og