I’m later in my 70th decade than most people suspect, an émigré from the age of the typewriter and the corded telephone, even a party line with a timed-cut off to cut off gossipy peeps. I’ve always been a gregrious gal – even as an awkward teen – so you can imagine how inhibiting this might have been.

Because I’m ancient-adjacent, AI hasn’t infused my work.

I have much to write about, opinions, memories, and other stuff, however. Stories to delight and/or disgust. In short, reasons to write.

I won a short non-fiction prize (applause, please and thanks) for the following multi-point explanation of why I write:

• because I’m compelled by blood. I honor my heredity: my parents and their highly literate minds. Humor’s sway is from my dad.
• because my first fully formed memory shows my mother and me, as ensemble. She took over my chore—defaulted forever to the eldest child—of drying the dishes, because I had homework. She helped me craft a metaphor that marked me forever in the teacher’s clear eyes, and I honed the gift.
• because my parents’ parents, whom we visited a lot, lived downstate. My folks had flown hundreds of miles from the coop, only to return every holiday, like alcoholics seeking booze. Onboard entertainment wasn’t ubiquitous back then, and the babies had demands. To occupy her eldest, my mom would point to a passing car and suggest, “What do you think their story is?” I was trained to story start—and I still do it at every stoplight.
• because I have a bodacious vocabulary, one which can implode casual conversation with friends. It’s never my intention to show off or shut down: I just know words. I adore writing for the precision my vocabulary can bring to a page, with beats in my head from iambic pentameter and song.
• because I can try on personality traits. To have an unknown, perhaps childish, aspect of me become sensate. To experience another’s point-of-view. To gain empathy for someone whose actions I abhor or one who has shown me great hate.
• because that’s often how I process my feelings, amidst complex episodes that bewilder or cause pain. That is, I write when I’m black, I write when I’m blue…and then I feel all better. Perspective gained; I create a win-win.
• because it’s a better preoccupation than piss-and-vinegar politics, the national conversation hobbling compassion and independent thought.
• because if I don’t like a character’s behavior, I hit delete, something I couldn’t do in my adored speech-language pathology career. I closed my private practice with a “whoopee”, not a whimper, and wrote on.
• because a sibling manipulates the family story, forever casting me as the antagonist and scourged. I’m scapegoated, seldom able to air my side, even when I have one. And so, I write my story. I declare my truth, I persist, I dare.
• to launch Google searches…I crave learning. On the path to self-actualization, there is no caveat. I’m more of a process person than a product person. I don’t default to research, but I do value its input.
• to circumvent Alzheimer’s or staleness of brain. I am a word nerd, and I take pride in it. I endeavor to maintain my cherished intellect, a love of my life.

I write because I can, and I am compelled to create. I call writing my elegant hobby.

To paraphrase a message from a famous book: All my reasons are equal, but some are more equal than others. Which ones do you think they are?

Whaddayathink?