{"id":160534,"date":"2022-07-06T14:00:41","date_gmt":"2022-07-06T18:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=160534"},"modified":"2022-07-06T14:11:50","modified_gmt":"2022-07-06T18:11:50","slug":"why-write","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Write?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photograph of light on water by Aayugoyal<\/a>. Licensed under CC0 4.0.<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

I encountered Joan Didion\u2019s famous line about why she writes\u2014\u201centirely to find out what I\u2019m thinking\u201d\u2014many times before I read the essay it comes from, and was reminded once again to never assume you know what anything means out of context. I had always thought the line was about her essays, about writing nonfiction to discover her own beliefs\u2014because of course the act of making an argument clear on the page brings clarity to the writer too. She may have believed that; she may have thought it a truth too obvious to state. In any case, it\u2019s not what she meant. She was talking about why she writes fiction<\/em>:<\/p>\n

I write entirely to find out what I\u2019m thinking, what I\u2019m looking at, what I see and what it means \u2026 Why did the oil refineries around Carquinez Strait seem sinister to me in the summer of 1956? Why have the night lights in the Bevatron burned in my mind for twenty years? What is going on in these pictures in my mind?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

These pictures, Didion writes, are \u201cimages that shimmer around the edges,\u201d reminiscent of \u201can illustration in every elementary psychology book showing a cat drawn by a patient in varying stages of schizophrenia.\u201d (I know these frightening psychedelic cats, the art of Louis Wain, very well\u2014I saw them as a child, in just such a book, which I found on my parents\u2019 shelves.) Play It As It Lays<\/em>, she explains, began \u201cwith no notion of \u2018character\u2019 or \u2018plot\u2019 or even \u2018incident,\u2019\u201d but with pictures. One was of a woman in a short white dress walking through a casino to make a phone call; this woman became Maria. The Bevatron (a particle accelerator at Berkeley Lab) was one of the pictures in her mind when she began writing A Book of Common Prayer<\/em>. Fiction, for Didion, was the task of finding \u201cthe grammar in the picture,\u201d the corresponding language: \u201cThe arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement.\u201d This is a much stranger reason to write than to clarify an argument. It makes me think of the scenes that I sometimes see just before I fall asleep. I know I\u2019m still awake\u2014they\u2019re not as immersive as dreams\u2014but they seem to be something that\u2019s happening to me, not something I\u2019m creating. I\u2019m not manning the projector.<\/p>\n

Nabokov spoke of shimmers too. \u201cLiterature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him,\u201d he said in a lecture in 1948. \u201cBetween the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story, there is a shimmering go-between.\u201d In this view, it seems to me, the writer\u2019s not the wraith who can pass between realms of reality and fantasy. The art itself is the wraith, which the artist only grasps at. Elsewhere, Nabokov writes that inspiration comes in the form of \u201ca prefatory glow, not unlike some benign variety of the aura before an epileptic attack.\u201d In his Paris Review<\/em> interview, Martin Amis describes the urge to write this way: \u201cWhat happens is what Nabokov described as a throb. A throb or a glimmer, an act of recognition on the writer\u2019s part. At this stage the writer thinks, Here is something I can write a novel about.\u201d Amis also saw images, a sudden person in a setting, as if a pawn had popped into existence on a board: \u201cWith Money<\/em>, for example, I had an idea of a big fat guy in New York, trying to make a film. That was all.\u201d Likewise for Don DeLillo: \u201cThe scene comes first, an idea of a character in a place. It\u2019s visual, it\u2019s Technicolor\u2014something I see in a vague way. Then sentence by sentence into the breach.\u201d For these writers that begin from something like hallucination, the novel is a universe that justifies the image, a replica of Vegas to be built out of words.<\/p>\n

William Faulkner wrote The Sound and the Fury <\/em>five separate times, \u201ctrying to tell the story, to rid myself of the dream.\u201d \u201cIt began with a mental picture,\u201d he told Jean Stein in 1956, \u201cof the muddy seat of a little girl\u2019s drawers in a pear tree.\u201d He couldn\u2019t seem to get it right, to find the picture\u2019s grammar, or hear it. (According to Didion, \u201cIt tells you. You don\u2019t tell it.\u201d) This was part of the work, this getting it wrong\u2014Faulkner believed failure was what kept writers going, and that if you ever could write something equal to your vision, you\u2019d kill yourself. In his own Paris Review<\/em> interview, Ted Hughes tells a story about Thomas Hardy\u2019s vision of a novel\u2014\u201call the characters, many episodes, even some dialogue\u2014the one ultimate novel that he absolutely had to write\u201d\u2014which came to him up in an apple tree. This may be apocryphal, but I hope it isn\u2019t. (I imagine him on a ladder, my filigree on the myth.) By the time he came down \u201cthe whole vision had fled,\u201d Hughes said, like an untold dream. We have to write while the image is shimmering.<\/p>\n

There is often something compulsive about the act of writing, as if to cast out invasive thoughts. Kafka said, \u201cGod doesn\u2019t want me to write, but I\u2014I must.\u201d Hughes wondered if poetry might be \u201ca revealing of something that the writer doesn\u2019t actually want to say but desperately needs to communicate, to be delivered of.\u201d It\u2019s the fear of discovery, then, that makes poems poetic, a way of telling riddles in the confession booth. \u201cThe writer daren\u2019t actually put it into words, so it leaks out obliquely,\u201d Hughes said. Speaking of Sylvia Plath, in 1995, he added, \u201cYou can\u2019t overestimate her compulsion to write like that. She had to write those things\u2014even against her most vital interests. She died before she knew what The Bell Jar<\/em> and the Ariel<\/em> poems were going to do to her life, but she had to get them out.\u201d Jean Rhys also looked at writing as a purgative process: \u201cI would write to forget, to get rid of sad moments.\u201d Some reach a point where the writing is almost involuntary. The novelist Patrick Cottrell has said he only writes when he absolutely has to. \u201cI have to feel borderline desperate,\u201d he said, and \u201cgoing long periods without writing\u201d helps feed the desperation. Ann Patchett, in an essay called \u201cWriting and a Life Lived Well,\u201d writes that working on a novel is like living a double life, \u201cmy own and the one I create.\u201d It\u2019s much easier not to be working on a novel\u2014I sometimes hear novelists speak of a work in progress as an all-consuming crisis\u2014but the ease of not working, after a while, feels cheap: \u201cthis life lived only for myself takes on a certain lightness that I find almost unbearable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some writers write in the name of Art in general\u2014James Salter for instance: \u201cA great book may be an accident, but a good one is a possibility, and it is thinking of that that one writes. In short, to achieve.\u201d Eudora Welty said she wrote \u201cfor it<\/em>, for the pleasure of it<\/em>.\u201d Or as Joy Williams puts it, in a wonderfully strange essay called \u201cUncanny the Singing that Comes from Certain Husks,\u201d \u201cThe writer doesn\u2019t write for the reader. He doesn\u2019t write for himself, either. He writes to serve \u2026 something. Somethingness. The somethingness that is sheltered by the wings of nothingness\u2014those exquisite, enveloping, protecting wings.\u201d Is that somethingness the wraith, the shimmering go-between? Or a godlike observer? \u201cThe writer writes to serve,\u201d she writes, \u201cthat great cold elemental grace which knows us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Faulkner felt a duty toward the work that superseded all other ethics (\u201cIf a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the \u2018Ode on a Grecian Urn\u2019 is worth any number of old ladies\u201d!), he also found writing fun, at least when it was new. David Foster Wallace, in a piece from the 1998 anthology Why I Write<\/em>, edited by Will Blythe, agrees: \u201cIn the beginning, when you first start out trying to write fiction, the whole endeavor\u2019s about fun \u2026 You\u2019re writing almost wholly to get yourself off.\u201d (He\u2019s not the only writer in the volume to describe writing as physical, almost sexual pleasure; William Vollmann claims he would write just for thrills but also likes getting paid, \u201clike a good prostitute.\u201d) But once you\u2019ve been published, the innocent pleasure is tainted. \u201cThe motive of pure personal fun starts to get supplanted by the motive of being liked,\u201d Wallace writes, and the fun \u201cis offset by a terrible fear of rejection.\u201d Beyond the pleasure in itself, the fun for fun\u2019s sake, writing for fun wards off ego and blinding vanity.<\/p>\n

For every author who finds writing fun there is one for whom it\u2019s pain, for whom Nabokov\u2019s shimmerings would not be benign but premonitions of the suffering. Ha Jin said, \u201cTo write is to suffer.\u201d Spalding Gray said, \u201cWriting is like a disease.\u201d Truman Capote, in his introduction to The Collected Works of Jane Bowles<\/em>, and perhaps a particularly self-pitying mood, called writing \u201cthe hardest work around.\u201d Annie Dillard said that \u201cwriting sentences is difficult whatever their subject\u201d\u2014and further, \u201cIt is no less difficult to write sentences in a recipe than sentences in Moby-Dick<\/em>. So you might as well write Moby-Dick<\/em>.\u201d (Annie Dillard says such preposterous things\u2014\u201cSome people eat cars\u201d!) It\u2019s fashionable now to object on principle to the idea that writing is hard. Writing isn\u2019t hard, this camp says; working in coal mines is hard. Having a baby is hard. But this is a category error. Writing isn\u2019t hard the way physical labor, or recovery from surgery, is hard; it\u2019s hard the way math or physics is hard, the way chess is hard. What\u2019s hard about art is getting any good\u2014and then getting better. What\u2019s hard is solving problems with infinite solutions and your finite brain.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the question of whether the pain comes from writing or the writing comes from pain. \u201cI\u2019ve never written when I was happy,\u201d Jean Rhys said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to \u2026 When I think about it, if I had to choose, I\u2019d rather be happy than write.\u201d Bud Smith has said he\u2019s only prolific because he ditched all his other hobbies, so all he can do is write\u2014but \u201cpeople are probably better off with a yard, a couple kids, and sixteen dogs.\u201d Here\u2019s Williams again: \u201cWriting has never given me any pleasure.\u201d And then there\u2019s Dorothy Parker, simply: \u201cI hate writing.\u201d I love writing, but I hate almost everything about being a writer. The striving, the pitching, the longueurs and bureaucracy of publishing, the professional jealousy, the waiting and waiting and waiting for something to happen that might make it all feel worth it. But when I\u2019m actually writing, I\u2019m happy.<\/p>\n

Didion borrowed the title of her lecture \u201cWhy I Write\u201d from George Orwell, who in his essay of this name outlined four potential reasons why anyone might write: \u201csheer egoism\u201d (Gertrude Stein claimed she wrote \u201cfor praise,\u201d like Wallace in his weaker moments); \u201caesthetic enthusiasm\u201d or the mere love of beauty (William Gass: \u201cThe poet, every artist, is a maker, a maker whose aim is to make something supremely worthwhile, to make something inherently valuable in itself\u201d); \u201chistorical impulse,\u201d or \u201cdesire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity\u201d; and finally \u201cpolitical purpose.\u201d This last cause was what mattered to Orwell. \u201cEvery line of serious work that I have written since 1936\u201d\u2014he was writing this ten years later\u2014\u201chas been written, directly or indirectly, against <\/em>totalitarianism and for<\/em> democratic Socialism, as I understand it.\u201d He considered it \u201cnonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m unsure if Orwell meant that avoiding moral subjects was an unthinkable error, or a true impossibility, in the sense that one can\u2019t escape the spirit of the age. Was any post-war novel, any novel written or even read in 1946, a war novel ineluctably? Kazuo Ishiguro has said he never writes to assert a moral: \u201cI like to highlight some aspect of being human. I\u2019m not really trying to say, so don\u2019t do this, or do that. I\u2019m saying, this is how it feels to me.\u201d But having a moral, a didactic lesson, and being moral are different. Writers might try to avoid an argument and fail, even if it is less a thesis than an emergent property, a slow meaning that arises through cause and effect or mere juxtaposition. Ishiguro\u2019s novels, in the course of unfolding, do triangulate a worldview. John Gardner would say, if the work is didactic, that means it\u2019s too simple: \u201cThe didactic writer is anything but moral because he is always simplifying the argument.\u201d (He also said, hilariously, \u201cIf you believe that life is fundamentally a volcano full of baby skulls, you\u2019ve got two main choices as an artist: You can either stare into the volcano and count the skulls for the thousandth time and tell everybody, There are the skulls; that\u2019s your baby, Mrs. Miller. Or you can try to build walls so that fewer baby skulls go in.\u201d) The book can also stand in as an argument for its own existence. Toni Morrison wrote her first novel to fill what she saw as a treacherous gap in literature, to create a kind of book that she had always wanted to read but couldn\u2019t find\u2014a book about \u201cthose most vulnerable, most undescribed, not taken seriously little black girls.\u201d Her ambition was not to make white people empathize with black girls. \u201cI\u2019m writing for black people,\u201d Morrison once said, \u201cin the same way that Tolstoy was not writing for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only one writer in the Blythe anthology, a magazine writer named Mark Jacobson, claims he does it \u201cfor the money.\u201d (\u201cWhat other reason could there be? For my soul? Gimme a break.\u201d) No one in the book claims they do it for fame, though the luster of fame is tempting, distracting. In a TV documentary about Madonna that I saw many years ago, she said she always knew she wanted to be famous, and didn\u2019t really care how she got there\u2014music was just the path that worked out. This is not so different from Susan Sontag, who was also obsessed with fame from an early age. Plath too made such confessions in her diary. Capote often said he always knew he would be rich and famous. I think the wish for fame is reasonable, since practically there\u2019s not much money in writing unless you are famous. For most the rewards are meager. As Salter writes, \u201cSo much praise is given to insignificant things that there is hardly any sense in striving for it.\u201d The thing about success, good fortune, and maybe even happiness is this: You can see that there are people who \u201cdeserve\u201d whatever you have as much as you do but have less, as well as people who \u201cdeserve\u201d it less or equally and have more. So, at the same time, you want more and feel you don\u2019t deserve what you have. It\u2019s a source of anxiety, guilt, and resentment and troubles the very idea of what one \u201cdeserves.\u201d In the end I believe you don\u2019t deserve anything; you get what you get.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been collecting these theories of why writers write because so many writers have written about it. I love reading writers on writing. I love writers on their bullshit. During the first year of the pandemic, I started listening obsessively to interview podcasts. At first this was strategic. I had a book coming out, and I thought of them as training; I thought they would help me get better at talking about my own book. But I was also lonely. I wasn\u2019t going to readings or parties, and I missed writers\u2019 voices. The practice has diminishing comforts. After a while most writers sound the same, and some days, after bingeing on writers, I can start to feel pointless, interchangeable. Faulkner said he disliked giving interviews because\u00a0the artist was \u201cof no importance\u201d: \u201cIf I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, all of us.\u201d (And yet he named himself as one of the five most important authors of the twentieth century; there are limits to humility.) Some days I think the very question is banal, like photos of a writer\u2019s \u201cworkspace.\u201d They\u2019re all just desks! Why write? Why do anything? Why not<\/em> write? It\u2019s the same as the impulse to make a handprint in wet concrete or trace your finger in the mist on a window. What you wrote, as a kid, on a window was the simplest version of the vision. Why that vision? Why that vision, and why you?<\/p>\n

Tillie Olsen, in her 1965 essay \u201cSilences,\u201d called the not-writing that has to happen sometimes\u2014\u201cwhat Keats called agonie ennuyeuse<\/em> (the tedious agony)\u201d\u2014instead \u201cnatural silences,\u201d or \u201cnecessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation.\u201d Breaks or blocks, times when the author has nothing to say or can only repeat themselves, are the opposite of \u201cthe unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot.\u201d The unnatural silence of writers is suppression of the glimmer. This is Melville who, in Olsen\u2019s words, was \u201cdamned by dollars into a Customs House job; to have only weary evenings and Sundays left for writing.\u201d And likewise Hardy, who stopped writing novels after \u201cthe Victorian vileness to his Jude the Obscure<\/em>,\u201d Olsen writes, though he lived another thirty years\u2014thirty years gone, gone as that novel in the apple tree. She quotes a line from his poem \u201cThe Missed Train\u201d: \u201cLess and less shrink the visions then vast in me.\u201d And this same fate came to Olsen herself, who wrote what she wrote in \u201csnatches of time\u201d between jobs and motherhood, until \u201cthere came a time when this triple life was no longer possible. The fifteen hours of daily realities became too much distraction for the writing.\u201d I read Olsen\u2019s essay during a period in my life when stress from my day job, among other sources, was making it especially difficult to write. I didn\u2019t have the energy to do both jobs well, but I couldn\u2019t choose between them, so I did both badly. Like Olsen, I\u2019d lost \u201ccraziness of endurance.\u201d<\/p>\n

James Thurber said \u201cthe characteristic fear of the American writer\u201d is aging\u2014we fear we\u2019ll get old and die or simply lose the mental capacity to do the work we want to do, to make our little bids for immortality. Of late I\u2019ve been obsessed with the idea of a \u201cbody of work.\u201d I\u2019ve gotten it into my head that seven books, even short, minor books, will constitute a body of work, my body of work. When I finish, if I finish, seven books I can retire from writing, or die. But how long can the corpus really outlast the corpse? I heard Nicholson Baker on a podcast say his grandfather, or maybe some uncle or other, was a well-known writer in his day and is now totally unknown. Unless we\u2019re very, very famous, we\u2019ll be forgotten that quickly, he said, so you might as well write what you want. I think about that a lot. Since I don\u2019t have children, I have more time to write than Tillie Olsen did. But I don\u2019t have that built-in generation of buffer between my death and obscurity. At least I won\u2019t be around to know I\u2019m not known. DeLillo again: \u201cWe die indoors, and alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

That year when I walked so much while listening to writers that I wore clean holes through my shoes, I kept asking myself why I write\u2014or more so, why my default state is writing, since on any given day I might be writing for morality, Art, or attention, for just a little money. (I can\u2019t go very long without writing, though I can go for a while without writing something good.) I think I write to think\u2014not to find out what I think; surely I know what I already think\u2014but to do better thinking. Staring at my laptop screen makes me better at thinking. Even thinking about writing makes me better at thinking. And when I\u2019m thinking well, I can sometimes write that rare, rare sentence or paragraph that feels exactly right, only in the sense that I found the exact right sequence of words and punctuation to express my own thought\u2014the grammar in the thought. That rightness feels so good, like sinking an unlikely shot in pool. The ball is away and apart from you, but you feel it in your body, the knowledge of causation. Never mind luck or skill or free will, you caused that effect\u2014you\u2019re alive!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Elisa Gabbert<\/span> is the author of six collections of poetry, essays, and criticism, most recently<\/em> Normal Distance, out from Soft Skull in September 2022, and\u00a0<\/em>The Unreality of Memory & Other Essays. She writes the<\/em> \u201cOn Poetry\u201d column for <\/em>the New York Times, and her work has appeared recently in<\/em> Harper\u2019s, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, and<\/em> The Believer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019ve been collecting these theories of why writers write because so many writers have written about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1241,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[1889,67827,369,1362,18901,2704,7179,3581,75],"class_list":["post-160534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-don-delillo","tag-featured","tag-james-salter","tag-joan-didion","tag-not-writing","tag-sylvia-plath","tag-ted-hughes","tag-william-faulkner","tag-writing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Write? by Elisa Gabbert<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"July 6, 2022 \u2013 \u201cI\u2019ve been collecting these theories of why writers write because so many writers have written about it.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Write? by Elisa Gabbert\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"July 6, 2022 \u2013 \u201cI\u2019ve been collecting these theories of why writers write because so many writers have written about it.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-07-06T18:00:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-07-06T18:11:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/light-making-water-glow.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"683\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elisa Gabbert\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elisa Gabbert\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"18 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Elisa Gabbert\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/3d605ea5d83b9f602a21c7edaf5111b0\"},\"headline\":\"Why Write?\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-07-06T18:00:41+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-07-06T18:11:50+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/\"},\"wordCount\":3664,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/light-making-water-glow.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Don DeLillo\",\"Featured\",\"James Salter\",\"Joan Didion\",\"not writing\",\"sylvia plath\",\"Ted Hughes\",\"William Faulkner\",\"writing\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Arts & Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/\",\"name\":\"Why Write? by Elisa Gabbert\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/light-making-water-glow.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-07-06T18:00:41+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-07-06T18:11:50+00:00\",\"description\":\"July 6, 2022 \u2013 \u201cI\u2019ve been collecting these theories of why writers write because so many writers have written about it.\u201d\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/light-making-water-glow.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/light-making-water-glow.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Why Write?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/3d605ea5d83b9f602a21c7edaf5111b0\",\"name\":\"Elisa Gabbert\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e87d716edeb2da56794d892c66d678bc8899f2769ddaccfbd385ed2ed6ba6774?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e87d716edeb2da56794d892c66d678bc8899f2769ddaccfbd385ed2ed6ba6774?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Elisa Gabbert\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/egabbert\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Why Write? by Elisa Gabbert","description":"July 6, 2022 \u2013 \u201cI\u2019ve been collecting these theories of why writers write because so many writers have written about it.\u201d","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Why Write? by Elisa Gabbert","og_description":"July 6, 2022 \u2013 \u201cI\u2019ve been collecting these theories of why writers write because so many writers have written about it.\u201d","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2022-07-06T18:00:41+00:00","article_modified_time":"2022-07-06T18:11:50+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1024,"height":683,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/light-making-water-glow.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Elisa Gabbert","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Elisa Gabbert","Est. reading time":"18 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/"},"author":{"name":"Elisa Gabbert","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/3d605ea5d83b9f602a21c7edaf5111b0"},"headline":"Why Write?","datePublished":"2022-07-06T18:00:41+00:00","dateModified":"2022-07-06T18:11:50+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/"},"wordCount":3664,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/light-making-water-glow.jpg","keywords":["Don DeLillo","Featured","James Salter","Joan Didion","not writing","sylvia plath","Ted Hughes","William Faulkner","writing"],"articleSection":["Arts & Culture"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/","name":"Why Write? by Elisa Gabbert","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/light-making-water-glow.jpg","datePublished":"2022-07-06T18:00:41+00:00","dateModified":"2022-07-06T18:11:50+00:00","description":"July 6, 2022 \u2013 \u201cI\u2019ve been collecting these theories of why writers write because so many writers have written about it.\u201d","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/light-making-water-glow.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/light-making-water-glow.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/why-write\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Why Write?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/3d605ea5d83b9f602a21c7edaf5111b0","name":"Elisa Gabbert","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e87d716edeb2da56794d892c66d678bc8899f2769ddaccfbd385ed2ed6ba6774?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e87d716edeb2da56794d892c66d678bc8899f2769ddaccfbd385ed2ed6ba6774?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Elisa Gabbert"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/egabbert\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1241"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160534"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160575,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160534\/revisions\/160575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}