Rambling...

After answering numerous interview questions recently, at which I suspect I pretty much suck, it occurred to me to think about why I write. There’s always the pat answer – “Because I have to” – said with dramatic angst as if I’m driven to write. To some extent that’s the truth of course. No one, myself included, would write if they didn’t have some sort of drive to put words down on ‘paper’, whether it be fiction or non-fiction. Well, unless they’re still in school and haven’t any choice in the matter.

I’m lucky in that I can sit and write whenever the spirit moves. I’ll get a ‘what if’ idea and take it from there. Strangely enough it’s only been in the last four or five years, that I really began to do that. Before then, if anyone had suggested I could tell a story and make it something people would read and enjoy I’d have told them they were out of their ever-loving minds.

Here’s the thing though; once I wrote that first one and discovered that people did like it, it was as if a whole new ‘me’ was born. I’ve always been creative, to wit the fact that I designed and made costumes for most of my adult life. But I’ve never considered myself an artist. I’ve dabbled in this and that, painting, carving, making silver jewelry, all of which fulfilled a need in me to create, just as the costuming did.

Never however did I have the drive and imagination that it takes to sit down and write. Or I didn’t think that I did until I started. Now it’s an all-consuming passion. Okay, that sounds very, what, pretentious? It’s the truth however. I love to take a character through from start to finish, seeing what happens to them in the process. And believe me, when I start I often have no clue where they’re going to end up. Sometimes they have their HEA, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they even die at the end. The shock value of that last is fun to pull off. *grinning*

It’s the same with a plot. I can begin at the beginning, with a vague idea of where I want it to go, and end up at total right angles from where I’d planned. And yet I still end up with something that works, or so I’ve been told by those who’ve read my writings.

I’m not certain all of this rambling answers the question of why I write. I suppose, ultimately, it’s because I like entertaining my readers with a great variety of ideas, characters and adventures. So there it is. In the end it comes down to being able to give people some small pleasure, and a couple of hours where they can leave their real life behind and immerse themselves in someone else's life, that makes what I do worthwhile to me; and hopefully to my readers.

End of rambling. For now at least.