One thing that makes me really sad is my inability to remember certain periods of my life.

My present mind is a summation of all my previous experiences. Subconsciously all the data is still there, but not consciously. I wish I could remember a day in my past as vividly as I experienced it then.

When I look back at my life, there are gaps in my memory. There are periods of my life from which I hardly remember anything at all, even the basic things like who my friends were and what we did in our spare time. Then there are periods where I remember tons of little things; I remember a whole day's worth of events, and things that I was thinking about, and conversations that I had.

Invariably, the periods that I remember well are those during which I took the time to write, draw, take photos, craft, or create anything at all. It doesn't even matter what I draw or write about... it can be something entirely unrelated to what I'm thinking or hoping that I'll remember in the future. As long as I write something, I can later read that, and it will take me back into the state my mind was in at the time I wrote it.

Recently I collected every piece of my writing that I could find, typed it up, and saved it with the most accurate date I could come up with. Now I keep a timeline of all my writings, drawings, paintings, photos, videos and audio recordings in chronological order. It makes me feel SO much better. I only regret those gaps in my life where I didn't create anything.

Now I have a journal (um, word document) that I write in, so I should never go very long without writing something. But, of course, now there's Protagonize, so I pretty much write something every day, and that's amazing. You people are all amazing, keeping me on my toes and writing something interesting, not just a boring monologue to myself.

So... in this sense I write mainly for myself, but there's more to it. I definitely practice with the intent to improve, as with all things that I do. I hope to entertain people and to inspire them to be creative as well. But I have no aspirations of making money from any of my work. I wouldn't skip out on a convenient opportunity if one slapped me in the face, but I'm not seeking it.

So what is it about you? Why do you write?

RATE THIS CHAPTER!

Click to View Author Guidance

Tell us why you write...

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

updated Jul 14 by Tasha_Noble