Why do you write?

[williemeikle]

I've been asked many times why I write what I do. I choose to write mainly at the pulpy end of the market, populating my stories with monsters, myths, men who like a drink and a smoke, and more monsters. People who like this sort of thing like it.

I've also been criticised for it by people who don't get it. Willie Meikle is..."the author of the most cliched, derivative drivel imaginable...the critical acclaim he receives from his peers is virtually non-existent." is only one of the responses I've had.

Now, I don't write for the critical acclaim of my peers. I couldn't give a toss what other writers think of me. I'm writing for two reasons... myself and a readership. Posterity, if there is one, can decide on whether it's any good or not. Besides, the harder I work at it making my writing accessible, the more readers I get, so I'm doing something right.

But that's still not why I do it. My pat answer has always been the same. "I like monsters."

But it goes deeper than that.

I write to escape.

I grew up on a West of Scotland council estate in a town where you were either unemployed or working in the steelworks, and sometimes both. Many of the townspeople led hard, miserable lifes of quiet, and sometimes not so quiet desperation. I was relatively lucky in that both my parents worked, but they were both on shifts that rarely coincided, and I spent a lot of time alone or at my grandparent's house.

My Granddad was housebound, and a voracious reader. I got the habit from him, and through him I discovered the Pan Books of Horror and Lovecraft, but I also discovered westerns, science fiction, war novels and the likes of Mickey Spillane, Ed McBain, Alistair MacLean, Dennis Wheatley, Nigel Tranter, Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov. When you mix all that together with DC Comics, Tarzan, Gerry Anderson and Dr Who then, later on, Hammer and Universal movies on the BBC, you can see how the pulp became embedded in my psyche.

When I was at school these books and my guitar were all that kept me sane in a town that was going downhill fast. The steelworks shut and employment got worse. I -could- have started writing about that, but why bother? All I had to do was walk outside and I'd get it slapped in my face. That horror was all too real.

So I took up my pen and wrote. At first it was song lyrics, designed (mostly unsuccessfully) to get me closer to girls.

I tried my hand at a few short stories but had no confidence in them and hid them away. And that was that for many years.

I didn't get the urge again until I was past thirty and trapped in a very boring job. My home town had continued to stagnate and, unless I wanted to spend my whole life drinking (something I was actively considering at the time), returning there wasn't an option.

As I said before, I write to escape.

My brain needed something, and writing gave it what was required. That point, back nearly twenty years ago, was like switching on an engine, one that has been running steadily ever since.

And most of the time, the things that engine chooses to give me to write are very pulpy.

I think you have to have grown up with pulp to -get- it. A lot of writers have been told that pulp=bad plotting and that you have to have deep psychological insight in your work for it to be valid. They've also been told that pulp=bad writing, and they believe it. Whereas I remember the joy I got from early Moorcock, from Mickey Spillane and further back, A E Merritt and H Rider Haggard. I'd love to have a chance to write a Tarzan, John Carter, Allan Quartermain, Mike Hammer or Conan novel, whereas a lot of writers I know would sniff and turn their noses up at the very thought of it.

I write to escape.

I haven't managed it yet, but I'm working on it.

[J.H. Farr]

Okay, what I'm interested in now is how you came to be living in Newfoundland! There has to be a story there, right? :-)

And thank you for the long reply. I have nothing whatsoever against pulp and envy you for finding a productive, compatible niche for yourself. I've written about my own life for years, and my readers love that, but it's time for a change. You've given me something to think about here.

[M T McGuire]

Originally Posted by Roger Parkinson

It is the one way to go to the places I want to go to and meet the people I want to meet. But there is more than that. There's a satisfaction in exercising the discipline of crafting a story so that it actually works. I write software during the day, and there are some parallels. Software has to work right and, in a different way, so does a story.
But mostly I like reading my stories to my wife (can't read her the software, I tried :-)).

I have this picture of you trying to read... now is it called C++ embedded chip code... and her going to sleep ;-)

Cheers

MTM

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by DavidRM

I think I write for the same reason I program (develop software):

I like to create.

I like to imagine something and then make it real. Writing stories and designing software are two ways that I can do that. In the latter, I imagine a program or game and then build it. In the former, I imagine characters and worlds and magics and I get to make those real too.

I like to create. I'm not sure how else to describe it.

-David

See this is the thing with me. I don't have to write. But I do have to be doing something creative and I seem to switch or cycle through a variety of activities, writing poetry, fiction, non-fiction, pencil drawing, digital painting, sometimes music/songwriting...

Much creativity also in programming / software design/architecture too as David says.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by J.H. Farr

Okay, what I'm interested in now is how you came to be living in Newfoundland! There has to be a story there, right? :-)
....

To get away from the monsters of course.

[J.H. Farr]

I would think there are PLENTY of monsters in Newfoundland!

[kennyc]

One man's monster.....

[DavidRM]

Originally Posted by kennyc

See this is the thing with me. I don't have to write. But I do have to be doing something creative and I seem to switch or cycle through a variety of activities, writing poetry, fiction, non-fiction, pencil drawing, digital painting, sometimes music/songwriting...

Much creativity also in programming / software design/architecture too as David says.

Yeah, I can relate to that. I tend to cycle through my main creative activities: programming, writing, gaming (PnP RPG's), photography.

-David

[varelov]

Because it's fun! And this story that just came to me like a homeless cat in the middle of a winter night needs to be told. And because nothing I read this week was something I would actually sit down and read.

[Luke King]

I write to communicate. I feel as though I have something to say and I get a buzz out of the idea of someone reading something I have written. In "On Writing" King says it's the closest thing to telepathy we have. There's no other form of entertainment where you get inside another person's mind so completely - the mind of the author. Books have a personality. It's like you actually get to know the author when you're reading. This is one reason why author mug-shots always put me off. No matter what the author looks like, it isn't the person I've spent hours with.

Of course, I like having written more than actually writing (and that's another famous quote). I love reading stuff I wrote weeks, months or even years ago and experiencing it. I always see the flaws - and that's good, but I have sometimes laughed and, perhaps less often, cried.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by DavidRM

Yeah, I can relate to that. I tend to cycle through my main creative activities: programming, writing, gaming (PnP RPG's), photography.

-David

Oops forgot the photography.

[Lemurion]

Some things, I write because they pay me. Kids are expensive.

Other things I write because nobody else gets it right so I have to.

I love old-school pulp because it's so much fun and over the top, I also love space opera and heroic fantasy. I want fun in my fiction, much more than any amount of moping and great literary meaning. Like Poul Anderson, I'm after beer money.

[Miss_Fletcher]

So that I don't go mad.

Aside from the fact my imagination is probably the most powerful tool I have at my disposal, I write to show myself (and others when they're interested) how I see the world around me, and how the world could be if I created in it.