Why I Write

Like most writers I know, I write because I have to. Not the kind of have to where you’re going to die if you don’t.  Or even the kind of have to because if you don’t you can’t pay the bills and you’ll starve to death and so will your family and then you’ll be thrown out on the street and you’ll be homeless. That kind of have to doesn’t apply to most writers because the large majority of us don’t actually make our living from writing. We teach. We wait tables. We tend bar. We help women choose the right shoes.

I write because it is who I am. I write because it is the one thing I can do reasonably well. I write because it is the only time I am completely in control. I write to make sense of the world. I write because it gives me a place in that world. I write because it allows me to put something down in that blank space that asks for your occupation. I write because when it’s going well, which it doesn’t always, it gives me immense satisfaction.  I write because it puts a smile on my face and a spring in my step.

I wish I could do something else. Like be a carpenter. Or a painter. Or a sculptor. Because the people who do that can see the palpable results of what they create.  They can look at their work and say, “hey, that’s a pretty good job.”  And they can point it out to their friends and family and say, “see that?  Well, I made it.”  And their friends and family can say, “hey, that’s some beautiful piece of work.”

Like most writers I know, I have a love-hate relationship with writing. I’ll do anything, and I mean anything to avoid sitting down at the computer to write.  In fact, even though this, what I’m doing now, writing this essay, is writing, it’s also a convenient way to avoid writing what I should be writing, which is working on my next novel.

It’s not that writing is painful for me. In fact, when I actually do it, it’s joyous. It’s just that every time I sit down in front of the computer to write, I’m challenging yourself. Can I do it? Do I have something important to say? Will I be able to entertain readers? Will anyone other than me (and sometimes not even me) like what I have to say? Will anyone understand it? Will anyone want to read it?  In short, am I good enough?

That can be daunting and I suppose it’s why some writers take to drink or drugs, which may help them deal with the pain that can come from writing. Of course, if they weren’t writing chances are they’d experience pain that would wind up driving them to drink and do drugs.

Fortunately, I do not have that kind of fear. I love challenging myself.  Most times, I don’t even know what I’m going to write when I sit down to do it.  I just let my imagination take over. I’m no longer Charles Salzberg citizen of the world. I am now Charles Salzberg writer. It provides me with an identity.

I’ve never had writer’s block. It’s a luxury you can’t afford when you’ve had to make a good part of your living as a writer, which I’ve had to. I began as a magazine journalist and I wrote to deadlines. If I didn’t make the deadline, I didn’t get paid.  I made the deadlines.  Always.

Now that I’m writing novels, my first love, I give myself deadlines. Now I’ve given myself the deadline of finishing a first draft of my next novel by the beginning of summer.

People often ask me if I have a routine. The answer is no. I write when I feel like it. I write when the guilt about not writing is so strong that I am compelled to sit down and write something, even if it’s a sentence or a paragraph or a page. I write best when the weather is bad. When the sun is out and the temperature is mild, or even not so mild, I’m compelled to be outside, enjoying the good weather. I sometimes pray for rain or at least a grey, cloudy day, so that I have nothing else to do but stay home and write.

I can always find things to keep me from writing. The Internet. TV. Answering emails (yes, it is a form of writing, I tell myself.) Going on Facebook to see how others are living their lives while I try to imagine lives I can commit to paper. Meeting friends for lunch. Going to the movies.

But somehow, no matter how hard I might try to avoid it, I wind up back where I should be.  Typing individual letters that become words then sentences then paragraphs then pages then chapters then, finally a book.

And that, my friends, is why I write.  And that is why that now, having written something, and seeing that the sun is shining, I shall take a well-earned break.

Charles Salzberg is the author the Shamus nominated Swann’s Last Song, Swann Dives In, Swann’s Lake of Despair and Swann’s Way Out, Devil in the Hole, named one of the best crime novels of 2013 by Suspense magazine, and his latest, Second Story Man.