Writing 101 – First Day

Why Do I Write?

The above being the subject of the first day of the Writing 101 course, which popped into my inbox today, I gave it some thought and tried a bit of freestyle writing around the question before giving it up and letting the day work its way into my head.

Now, after taking part in a full day course about using LinkedIn for one’s business, I feel I can finally sit here and write about why I write!  Words have always been like images to me – at least since I learned how to read.  Some words are delicious to roll around the tongue – playing with the way they sound and feeling the shape of the word as it is spoken, some words are entirely necessary because, without them, the others don’t make sense, and other words are simply beautiful to look at  – like a fine painting or a beautiful statue, vase, bird or person.  I write because I want to play with the words, to see the patterns they make when they are laid next to each other, to build a picture full of words which I can be proud to call mine, to be able to say ‘Look, I might not be able to paint, but I created that word picture – the picture which you now have in your head’.

For me, a good piece of writing stimulates the imagination in such a way that the reader can see, touch, feel, hear and live in the world which has been created.  This is where I want to be – the ultimate goal – to be able to create a world which another person believes in, at least whilst they are reading my words.