Higher, Further, Faster

[A. E. Lowan]

2017 and 2018 were especially hard months for us. I lost both of my parents in the space of eighteen months, without warning. There was no cancer, nothing to prepare for. Just suddenly they were gone.

But one thing they did do for us was give us unrelenting support. My mother was a professional writer and my Dad was a huge speculative fiction fan. They got to see the proof of our first book and hold it in their hands, and it was such a proud moment for them.

Everyday, I see their pictures on my desk and it drives me to push higher, further, faster. To write the books that would make them proud. The write the books we want to read.

What pushes you?

 

[Ban]

What pushes you?

I write because I can write, the better I get the more reason I have. I don't feel like anything is pushing me into writing, but a chance to share my thoughts with the world and have them live in the heads of as many people as possible certainly pulls me in. Besides that I'm a literary romantic to the bone, so I won't deny that legacy, prestige and furthering my personal narrative as a writer aren't significant factors. That's going to sound silly to any realist reading this, but that's all part of the tale as well

(PS: If you ever need to talk about that horrible course of events you experienced, chat is always open.)

 

[Svrtnsse]

What pushes you?

I've started. The story is out there. I can't leave it unfinished.

Also I quite enjoy it.

I don't have that demanding urge to write, and it's very often a struggle for me to sit down and start writing. Once I'm at it though, It's usually good fun, and it's difficult to stop unless the chapter's finished.

I also need for my books to sell, and while that's force that urges me to get writing done, I don't feel like it's a positive force. If I were to listen to it, I'd put my current project on the back burner and try for something more easily marketable instead.

 

[CupofJoe]

What pushes you?

Boredom. I'd like it to be a higher motivation, but writing stops me from spending too much time doing nothing.

 

[skip.knox]

Compulsion. I have boxes upon boxes of notebooks; been writing things down for fifty years, but for forty of those years it was just notes and fragments and false starts. Eventually I realized that despite being a computer support tech, a webmaster, a programmer, and a medieval historian, I was evidently a writer. So now I finish stories and get them published.

But the compulsion is the same. It's a thing I keep doing, like eating. Sometimes I like it, sometimes it's a chore, and mostly it's a thing that I just cannot stop doing.

 

[ThinkerX]

Kind of like Skip: I spent many years mucking about with the gaming stuff and background materials, had many false starts and unfinished projects, but only a bare handful of finished tales. But the compulsion never went away.

Right now, that compulsion is directed towards finishing the two series ('Labyrinth' and 'Empire') and getting them published. Yes, its a chore and a pain much of the time. But, I've been at them too long (rough draft of 'Labyrinth: Journal' was done a decade ago) and they've gotten too big to NOT finish. Then put them up on Amazon and sell fifty copies over a five year span. Get a few hard copies for the grandson and other relatives.

Get them wrapped up, well, there are other projects: a couple long ones to finish and several shorter ones to write.

 

[Firefly]

Pursuit of mastery. There is something I find intensely motivating about the idea of getting better at the craft of writing. It's like a massive puzzle with millions of facets that I can continue to solve and solve forever but will never completely beat. My absolute favorite writing quote is Ernest Hemingway's "We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master." There is something about that concept that just makes me giddy for some reason.

I am motivated to some extent by bringing my stories to life, but mostly, I want it to be done amazingly. I want to be awesome at it. I want to write the kind of stories that would be my all-time favorites if I found them on a bookshelf somewhere.

...And I know the likelihoods of me ever being that good are pretty low, but I don't care. That just means that there's endless room for improvement. Which is really the fun part anyway.

 

[briar_rose]

Hmmm... interesting question. For me it's that I feel very average, normal, even mediocre a lot of the time. I used to write a lot when I was a teenager and when I was at university, I like writing screenplays. Over my twenties I felt that I became less creative and I felt that was normal and maybe writing wasn't something I wasn't "meant" to be doing since I found it frustrating and difficult and I was never inspired. Over the last three months something's changed- I got into some good writing habits and now I'm at my happiest when working on my manuscript even when I think it's terrible or got massive plot holes. I have so many ideas I feel they're going to bubble over and I want to catch them and commit them to paper before they can escape. I think that's what's now driving me forward, the desire to commit my story to paper.

 

[Ned Marcus]

I feel compelled to write and tell the stories I would like to read. Creatively expressing myself just feels right.

(Sorry about your loss. It's hard to lose your parents.)

 

[Futhark]

It’s the why that got me interested. Why people tell stories, about themselves, about the world, about their imagination I guess. Once I got started down that path I wanted to express myself too. What pushes me is to create something that is at least approximating masterful.

(My condolences on your loss.)