Artistry With Words

Someone asked that question on a blog the other day: why do you write? What drives you to spend hours, days, weeks, months, even years creating articles and stories and books?

I had to give that question some serious consideration.  It’s not enough to simply say I have a passion for writing, because that begs the obvious question “then why do you have that passion?”  So, today, I will try to be as honest as possible and attempt to answer that question.

MOVE OVER, FREUD

For me, really, bottom line, it began during my early childhood, and the type of person I was becoming.  I was a runt. I was quiet. I was shy.  I was completely unsure of myself, and I was convinced that most kids did not like me.  Consequently, I retreated into my own little world.  It was a world of books and movies, stories and make-believe, safe havens where I could learn about life without bullying and without feeling inferior.

Feelings like those are deeply-ingrained. They do not magically disappear when one becomes a teen, a young adult, or even middle-aged.  As an adult I was a card-carrying member of the Introvert Club. I avoided group interactions. I rarely gave my opinion on anything to anyone I did not know extremely well.  Only my closest friends and family members knew what I felt about social issues, and only one friend, my best friend, knew anything about my inner-most feelings.  I was protected with my walls up.  It was extremely difficult for anyone to storm my castle and breech those walls.

AND YET

And yet I had a need to be heard.  Silence and introspection are fine if you are a hermit, but I wanted people to know me, I wanted people to hear my opinions, I needed people to recognize my existence.  The old question goes something like this: if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is there, does it make a sound? I did not want to be that tree, but I did not know how to avoid it, having built a life of avoidance for so many years.

Hello to writing!

Through writing, and thanks to the internet, I was able . . . I am able . . . to reach out to people and share my thoughts.  The internet provides protection from face-to-face judgments.  The internet is my safety net, and at seventy-two this old man still needs that safety net.

Writing truly is my tool for communication, and in a very real sense it has been my connection with the rest of the human race.

THE MARKETING SIDE OF IT ALL

People have often asked me why I don’t spend more time marketing my books. They tell me I’m good enough to be published, and I really need to make more of an effort to do so.

But that misses the whole point about why I write. I don’t write to be published by some major publishing company.  I don’t particularly care if thousands purchase my books.  I’m just that ten-year old kid, pounding on the typewriter, trying to release his thoughts and hoping someone hears them.

I just want to be heard by someone.

And, so, I write!  Writing is my legacy.  Decades from now, someone will read an article I wrote online, or pick up one of my dusty books, and they will read my words and know, for a moment, that a writer by the name of Bill Holland existed, and they will know who I was and how I felt about life.

And, for that, I am grateful.

Bill

“Helping writers to spread their wings and fly.”