Why do You Write?

I’d Like to Blame My Grandmother

Midnight, and I’m wide awake. My fingers race over the keyboard, leaving little red error lines all over the page as they try to keep up with my mind, the ideas flowing faster as I type, “On the third page, a young woman’s pointed profile stands out against the sea of a crowd. All heads are turned the same direction, and above the performers, you can see it blazing in the top corner. The words written out fifty feet in the air, made of fire with no source. 

“The Circus”. 

I say it out loud. To make it feel more real, more possible, like something I can hold. I want the fire to burn the keyboard and blister my fingers, I want proof. But that's the funny, knock-your-socks-off, giggle-at-a-funeral thing about magic. How can you prove something that doesn’t exist? 

Crack open a fantasy novel and find nothing but figments of a person's imagination, a whole mess of wizards, dragons, fairytale endings, and everything else deemed “impossible” by society’s generally accepted ideas of reality. But when thousands of people read it, well, that’s when the real magic is made. It becomes more than just the words on the page. It’s the spark of inspiration you feel when the hero saves the day, the relief of knowing that you’re not the only one, the unity created by holding the same, worn paperback copy. The words come to life, and then there’s no denying that magic exists. Because to the thousands of lives that a story has touched, it exists to them.

My imagination has always run wild. I see monsters in the shadowy corners of my bedroom, watch dragons soar through the sky disguised as puffy clouds, spiral over the hidden meaning in people’s words (that isn’t always there). I’d like to blame my grandmother. She filled my head with fantasies, praised me for my mind as we built worlds together—ones with princesses and friendly wizards and a pair of pink shoes that would take you anywhere if you just asked nicely. 

I used to feel at home on my grandmother's lap. Sunken into the cream colored couch, I saw her words play out in my mind's eye. I drifted off as she told me stories of when she was my age and she sat on her own grandma’s lap. Stories about when she would run around with her neighborhood friends. She told me about her scraped knees and the splinters she’d collect on her fingers from the northern Idaho woods. And it was like I was meeting her, at seven years old with her unruly curls and her scraped knees and her splinters and her voice that said, “Call me Deedee”. 

A couple of months ago she sent me a text, because we never talk on the phone anymore—I can’t remember when that stopped. She asked me to help her write her memoir, and then emailed 300 pages of herself to my inbox. Reading through them, I got to meet her all over again. A younger version of the gray hair and smile lines I’d come to know. A headstrong woman, with crooked teeth and a youthful restlessness still there after three daughters and a divorce. As I read through her words, I can hear her voice once again. “Call me Dee”, she says.

So I’d like to blame my grandmother. When it’s midnight and I’m wide awake, hunched over my keyboard—fingers slightly shaky from caffeine and the pressure of an approaching deadline. When it's in between really late and far too early and the light coming in from the window paints my walls a deep indigo, and I’m second guessing every sentence I’ve ever written. Half the time I’m not sure what the hell I’m even doing, when I watch the eyebrows of my mom’s friends raise as I tell them “I’m gonna be a writer”. I want to reflect people back onto themselves. I am interested in people and their communities. The stories they have to share and the narratives they are passing down. 

Part of me wishes I could forget this whole thing and get a business degree and have a shot at making some real money. Because I’m terrified of the failure. I’m terrified of the failure, but I’m scared out of my mind of what would happen if I were to stop. If my fingers that raced over the keyboard came to a crashing halt— “Backup on neural pathway 5!” someone would shout. 

I write because I have to, because I don’t know how to do anything else. Because of prose about autumn leaves and harsh consonants and flowing vowels and the chills that take over my spine over a really good turn of phrase. Because of the feeling I get when I turn over the last page of a really good book. Because of my grandmother, with her stories and her love and the way that she was able to share pieces of herself, using her words like gifts for the ears they reached.