Why do we write?

Why Do I Write?

I laughed as I perused the recent Substack of my friend’s slightly sarcastic prose.

Once a prolific writer on another online publication, he left to write on his own and is quickly adding followers as the Piped Piper added minions. He called the former site a frivolous online publication. I could be insulted, but instead I was bemused.

I still wrote on this frivolous publication; it has lost its luster with me—yet I stay on knowing it will turn around. There was a time when the community was large and strong, when writers supported one another’s work in droves. When in a few short hours your reads would cruise past the required 108 views and hearts and comments were plentiful.

But, no more. One must beg for a read, hearts and comments are stingily withheld. Why? Do folks fear competition? Why? To get on the winner list to accrue $40 to $108 cash? That does not even buy a month of groceries, sans lottery tickets, money orders, stamps and cheap wine.

So, while I chuckle at my friend’s possible truth, I will continue to write on it. I am holding hope close to my crying heart that the readers and other writers will wake up and give a care.

Why do I write? To process my grief on the loss of my senior gray feline—and the loss of a decade’s old friendship.

I write as I walk the oval shaped path around the lake. The sounds of laughter in the wind from the school children next door.

I write to match the speed of the slow-moving tortoise in the lake, with his mate.

I write as I recall the sweet lovemaking in the splintered red barn deep in Virginia. Feeling the breath of the brown and white dotted cow peering over the hayloft.

I write to remember the sweaty thrusting sex as I lay on the dusty pool table. Eight ball in the front corner pocket from some swift move.

I write laughing at new lovers frolicking in the old Baltimore cemetery, looking for the gravestone with the name—Edgar Allan Poe.

I write to silence the pain of the 1975 rape in the hallway of my tiny rowhouse.

I write at memories of steamy shameless sex in saunas and hot tubs.

I write because—I can.