Why Do We Write?

Why am I doing this? Spending all this time, getting punched in the face with

rejections? And for what? I've had some success publishing educational materials, a couple of newspaper articles, some stories online. But, the Holy Grail (publishing

a book) remains elusive.

And it's the greatest failure no one has read my dreams, my ideas and it's

like I'm missing an arm or something!

But then I started to thing about it.

Why do I write?

And then the realization hit me. I don't write to get some kind of accolade, or get

published and become some kind of famous person where people say "Wow! That's

a great example of blah, blah, blah."

No!

I write because I have to. It's just a function. Maybe other writers feel this way. But,

I'm going to keep writing, even as I grow older, and slowly, and even more obscure

than I am even now.

The great Southwestern artist Eitore DeGrazia was enthralled with the concept of the

lost gold mine (like me). He was famous though, and he wanted to emulate that

concept of a lost treasure being somewhere out in that desert. So, he took some of

his paintings (worth thousands now), and rolled them up in an architect's drawing

tube, and hid them somewhere in the desert.

Maybe that's how my stories end up.