Reasons to write

Why would you start on something that's never going to be perfect? What are your reasons to write?

Why would you spend hours at your desk working on something without guaranteeing that anyone will read it? Why would you ache for a mirror that shows you the truth about yourself? A truth with half-finished sentences and grammar mistakes you created and need to fix? Why would you want to make something, close your laptop, and, when you come back, realize how bad it is? And do it all over again, for years? That’s what writing is: Creating, criticizing, and fixing. Over and over. Until you think it’s done. Surprise: it’s never done. Why do you want this?

For obvious reasons

Books Books Books Books Books

When I read, I learn something new or travel to another place or time. As a child, I held a book in my hands and thought, "I want to know how books are made. I will make one myself."

Because I want to

I create purely for the sake of creation. No one tells me to do it. It’s a powerful feeling to do something driven entirely by my will. I’m doing it because I want to prove to myself that I can write a novel. I write because I want to write. Period.

I love languages

A puzzle with words. Juggle with them, finding meaning in synonyms. Breaking down sentence structure. I love switching from Dutch to English and discovering the similarities and differences between them. Using metaphors. I want to complicate a sentence, edit it, and make it clear and smooth. Every sentence has a history that only the writer has witnessed.

I like to understand the complexity within simplicity. In music, people often say, “It sounds so simple,” about their favorite riff. But it’s hard to make music sound effortlessly simple. It’s the same with writing. It’s the same with all art. It begins as chaos in my head, a force I need to express. ‘A’ becomes AC, becomes AVXK, and then I bring it back to AB. I want to witness this creative discovery within myself. AB seems so simple, but clarity only comes after making a mess.

I want my name on the cover

Sometimes, it's as simple as that.

To captive and immortalize experiences

When I’m a hundred years old, I’ll have a shelf full of books I’ve read and written. Books with my name on them. They will be ways of holding onto memories. That time I lived abroad? Those early years of being twenty, that person I was with, the love I felt, the adventures. These are all sources of inspiration for my fiction. A character, a feeling, a setting, a sentence, or music someone shared with me have all contributed to a book or a scene.

My readers don’t need to know what was real, what was made up, or how I changed details. But for me, it’s a devotion to a time in my life, to a person I once was, or to people who made the time memorable.

The plot and the story are more important than my nostalgia. But that one friend I lived with in Prague in my twenties? I attributed her funkiness to a character in my novels.

To be someone else

With all the people I thought I wanted to be, I’d have to give up the time I could spend writing. I can live a thousand lives by becoming someone else on the page.

Calmness

I live for my time alone at my desk, with music from my writing playlist in the background. The city is asleep, and a candle flickers on my desk. I worry about a scene or something I’ve created. The real world around me is calm, while I order the world in my head.

See the world as material

I go through life thinking, "Could this be turned into a scene, a book, a character?" Paradoxically, I’m overthinking and lost in my head, but I feel more connected to the world. Writing brings a sense of relief. As long as I can write, I can live.

What does writing or creating art mean to you? I’d love to hear it