June 18, 2012

Why Does the Writer Write?

"Because one can't not write. Because he has to. It is that simple... The writing is not for fame, money, or notoriety, but to fulfill a more personal need, the need to find out what one is thinking, the need to put it down so that it can be dealt with, the need to codify emotion." - Jane Piirto in Understanding Creativity

Rowan Williams, it would seem, concurs with this understanding of the act of writing as a self-discovery of sorts, a knowing by doing: "you only discover what you have to say in the doing of it."