If I'm being completely honest my first answer has to be plain old narcissism. If after all the invention in, and revision of, a piece the end result actually "works", I'll just read and reread it over and over, kind of like an amputee with morphine clicker in hand. Imagine Jake Gyllenhal getting home from a session with the personal trainer and just staring in the mirror with his shirt off for the next 6 hours. It's something like that. Something masturbatory and vain. 

But it doesn't end there, thankfully.

I forget the author's name, and I'm going to murder the quote, but she said something like:

"I read what I write so that I can see what I think." 

That's part of the experience for me also, and in that way it's a worthwhile exercise. 

George Saunders has an analogy he likes to use in interviews about the reader who walks around with 5 shirts on. Good writing forces him to undress, layer by layer, and be able to more nakedly, acutely, feel what the weather is like. So if it's sunny outside, he feels it. If it's rainy, snowing, hailing, he feels that. He's rendered vulnerable, receptive, open. At this moment my dormant inner homophobe is tossing at the fact that I've used multiple guy-sans-shirt analogies in the same chapter (hmm). But as a writer, I guess I aspire to be able to do something like that with my work. 

A worthy goal, I think. 

How about you?

Author guidance for This exercise

Tell us why you write...

and don't forget to invite the next person to tell us too.

updated Feb 5 '10 by Tasha_Noble