I recently started a blog about what it's like to be a writer. Now that it's public knowledge that I love to write (yes, it used to be my dirty little secret), I get this question at least once a day: "Why do you write?" It's a loaded question, and I pity the fool who asks it of me. In all seriousness, though, it is truly a deep question that cannot be answered in passing, if at all. I'm nearly certain this is a question to which the answer can only be fully understood by other writers, but I'm going to attempt to answer it anyway . . . I mean, I'm going to attempt to let one of the world's most famous authors answer it for me.

If you're reading this article (or any article about writing), it is a near certainty that you have, at some point in time, read Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. If not, I strongly recommend you drop all of your other "to read" lists and get to it. If indeed you have read this fantastic classic of modern American literature...

The quote is by the book's character, Atticus (a widowed father), who says,

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

So, my answer, borrowed from Atticus, is that I (and other authors, I presume) write because it is the most courageous thing I know how to do. I write because it is a testimony to the masses that we all must try, against all odds, to see that which fulfills our passion through to the bitter end.

Writing (at least publishing) can be a losing battle - in fact, most of the time it is. To write a work of art that others (outside of one's immediate family) find worth reading is a rare win - but it is not an impossible task. As writers, in general, we know that we are "licked" before we begin, but we "begin anyway" and we "see it through no matter what." Why? Simple. Because we have to. There is a collective force much stronger than the individual that pushes us to write and to fight the battle to finish. There is something so tempting about the possibility of "sometimes" winning that it is more painful to not write than to write.

Why do writers write, you ask? Why does anyone follow their passion when they know that winning is a long shot? Why? Because we have courage, darn it, that's why! We write because it is the most courageous thing we know how to do...because we have been blessed (or cursed, as it may be) with the hands of a writer.

"I pray for the hands of a writer." They are words I read years ago, written by Richard J. Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline. When I read these words, something changed in me...something that was as much as a calling as it was a confirmation. I am a writer; therefore, I must write. I knew then that the gift I had been given was exactly that: the hands of a writer. It's a gift no better than any other - no more significant - but it's mine and I am grateful.

Foster started his book, as many authors do, with acknowledgments. In that section he wrote:

"I am struck profoundly by the weakness of words...and yet I am struck even more profoundly by the fact that God can take something so inadequate, so imperfect, so foolish as words on paper and use them to transform lives."

Indeed! Words transform lives. Words can harm and they can heal. They can affect us deeply and in different ways, and often to the very core of our being. Words can sting, and words can soothe. Words can grant a much-needed escape from the world, and this is the greatest gift an author can give his reader...the gift of temporary escape. They are, in fact, only words...but when they are strung together into meaningful messages by the hands of a writer, they are enough to change the world . . .

Lola T. Parker, novelist

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