Sometimes, a simple question can completely disarm you. That’s how I felt when Niva, while I was showing her one of my drafts for Epic Planet, asked me:
– Why do you write?
Here’s how it happened: A few days ago, as you know, Epic Planet was in its final stretch, and I was fine-tuning the blog posts that would appear on the homepage. I had already shown Niva some of them. She’s my go-to for both ideas and style. She tells me when I’m going “too far” or when I’m “not far enough.” Basically, she’s my anchor and my control tower.
We were sitting at an ice cream shop while she read one of my posts. When she finished, she stayed silent. Almost panicking, I asked:
—Is it bad? You didn’t like it?
She looked at me, searching for words for what felt like an eternity, and finally said:
—It’s not that it’s bad. It depends on what you’re trying to say. Tell me, what was your goal when you wrote this story?
If I was near panic before, now I was completely lost.
—I don’t understand, —I stammered.
—Yes, what were you trying to evoke in people when you wrote this? Did you want to move them, share your perspective, wake them up to something? I don’t know… What were you trying to achieve?
My fight-or-flight instinct was kicking in.
—A goal for writing? I don’t understand. Should writing have a goal?
Don’t get me wrong: as a communicator, I always know my objectives. I know when I need to inform, raise awareness, sensitize, persuade, or… well, you get the idea. But it had never occurred to me that these stories needed—or should have—a goal.
—Of course they do, —she replied. —You write for something, and because of something, right? Tell me, why do you write?
I had never thought about it. I just write. I feel like there’s something I want to say. I find an analogy, a case, a similarity, and I write. I just start, and then I let my fingers follow what my head or my heart—or sometimes my gut—dictates. There are stories inside me; I just let them out. Yes, sometimes I hit a dead end. Then I research, go back, cross out pages and pages from my notebook. But after that, I just keep going, without thinking about why.
She looked at me for a long time, with that gaze that digs deep and weighs heavy. Her eyes seemed to search for something in me that even I didn’t know was there. And in that silence, I felt her question stirring everything inside me.
—Well, think about it, —she said. —If not at the beginning, do it while you’re writing, or when you finish the story. Think about the message you’d like to convey or how you’d like people to feel. Maybe you could make adjustments, flesh out some moments, or cut others.
And since then, many of the stories I now share on Epic Planet have gone through this filter, this adjustment. And I feel they’ve truly improved.
Even though I still don’t know why I write.
