Most questions posed to me: I can think out a reasonable answer, or within minutes, someone in the lunch room looks it up on google and we agree on the answer…because we found it on google.
This one question baffles me only because I don’t have a clear answer, and I don’t think anyone who writes fiction does.
Why would someone spend so much time at a keyboard to achieve so little in monetary rewards? Very few writers make a living writing, but thousands still do it. Why? I don’t have an answer, yet I do it.
I think we writers do it because we know we are the only ones who can write the stories we imagine. We are day dreamers who think of other universes. We are the “What if” people. We never lost our child like obsession of constant observation and curiosity. We create and work out problems that don’t exist in real life. We cause ourselves stress and get a thrill out of it. Why?
I have no idea why I play with this, I just know I should, for the rest of my life. Other than fishing, hunting, foraging, golfing, star gazing, metal detecting, teaching grandkids all the above, traveling and entertaining friends, loved ones, my wife and myself, what else do I have to do?
I told a friend, I write because when I die I want the town paper to say, “Local author Dale Langlois is dead.” That’s good enough for me.