And just what is it that compels me to write, or any of us for that matter? What is the point? What is it exactly that I hope to accomplish?
Fame and fortune? Well, those certainly would be nice to have. But that’s not what compels me. It’s something in the sensation I get in reading a good book, watching an exciting movie, anxiously awaiting next week’s episode of a tv series. Some books that I read at night I just can’t put down. And when I do, I’m dying to know what happens next.
I’m invested in the characters, and the events which will befall them enthrall me. I want to recreate that.
Ok, but why? So I can say that *I* created that sensation in my readers? Yes, I suppose, but why do I want that? Pride? Generosity? Something else? I want to create that fascination, that addiction to a fiction, an alternate world, because it is fundamentally wonderful thing for a human to create such a work which grabs at others, helps them escape, entertains them. The pursuit of technological perfection is a self-perpetuating phenomenon in our society, but the creation of art and entertainment is something that transcends the banal, that creates ephemeral, unreal worlds which only sentient minds can understand and experience.
It’s a fascination with this fact that we can create unrealities which are simultaneously real to our minds as well as unreal as we continously acknowledge the story as fiction, yet invest in the characters. That magical ’suspension of disbelief’. It’s something I want to create. It excites me, it fascinates me, I’m curious if I can do it. I want to be able to do it and hear and see other’s reactions to it. It would make me happy to entertain others in such a way, it would make me feel like I’ve created and contributed something distinct, however insignificant, to human society (not to downplay virtuous acts of charity and the like, but to create something is an amazing concept to ponder).
So, it is this act of creation of fiction, of an escape, of art, of something not real yet real that is magical in its allure. I cannot help but feel drawn, motivated, no, required to participate in the efforts to perform such an action.