Dear Writer,

Why do you write?

This is the quintessential question every writer needs to ask themselves. In fact, if you don’t have an answer, I suggest coming up with one now. People are going to ask you. They will probably ask you this question as often as they ask you how you come up with ideas. Of course, no answer you give is going to actually going to provide an insight into the world of writing. It’s incredibly personal. The answer is different for each of us, but I think it is probably the most important question you can ask.

I can’t tell you why you write. I can’t give you a universal answer that will satisfy everyone who asks. I can only tell you why I write.

I write to survive.

In a way, I always have. Even when I was a little kid and would spend time staring off into space instead of paying attention in class. I was creating a world to deal with the issues inside my brain. Each quarter, I would come home from school with a report card filled with decent grades and a comment from my teachers saying something along the lines of “Matt is a good student, but he is easily distracted.”

Well, I am easily distracted.

My brain likes to spend time reliving the past or trying to invent a future. I find myself slipping away into endless fantasies. I rehash discussions and wish I could have said something a little different. I think of the small changes I could make to fix myself and the world.

Because, Writer, I am broken, and I write to be fixed.

I remember sitting in Mr. K’s creative writing class as a high school freshman. It was spring of 1998, and I was fourteen years old. I was younger than most of my classmates, a byproduct of starting school in a different state, and always felt alienated. All of my friends were older than me and I couldn’t always understand their world. I wasn’t just physically younger, I was an emotional late bloomer. I never felt like I fit in. I never felt connected.

Mr. K gave me a chance to change that, even if only on the page.

Our daily writing prompts allowed me to explore experiences and emotions I wasn’t able to handle on a conscious level. I was able to go places and live through things I didn’t fully understand and comprehend, and in experiencing them on the page, I was able to make them a part of me. I wrote stories to become part of the world. Without the awkward misgivings of my own voice standing in the way, those stories let me connect with others. I felt like I was part of something. I felt like I could bond with people. I felt human.

And, to the credit of the greatest English teacher of all time, I started to come out of my shell a bit. When we turned in final draft assignments, Mr. K would share some of the best with the class. I wasn’t always picked, but I was part of those standouts often enough other people in class began to ask me for advice on writing. Advice I was too broken and confused to give. It didn’t matter, I felt important. I felt remembered.

And I became addicted.

I spent the rest of my high school career trying to remember how much of an impact my writing could have. Of course, this led me to the one place every teenager in the late 90s eventually ended up, LiveJournal. I wrote down all of these harsh, irregular emotions in what is possibly my most prolific era as a writer. When you spend all of your time in egotistical navel gazing, words come easily. At the time, I even thought I was actually opening up and bleeding onto the page. Eventually, my little community of LJ friends grew, and I began to get regular comments and feedback.

Once again, I felt connected. I felt important. I felt remembered.

The addiction was sated.

When I dropped out of college in 2001 and moved 150 miles from home, I found myself once again isolated and alone.