Why I write?

 

I purchased a copy of George Orwell’s book Why I write from Amazon and it is an essay on the motives that made him decide to become a writer. I haven’t read the book yet but somehow I know why even before I started reading it as my eyes were fixed to that three-word syllable question “Why I write?” That title gazed into my timid eyes intruding my thoughts asking me questions “Why you write, Why do you want to write, Why you should write and Why you need to write?” That book won’t tell me the answer as only I should be the one to answer that.

Like George, whenever I was by myself in the school playground, I make up stories in my head and imagination was my best friend and confidant that got me through the dark times and the good times in the callous tides of racial hostility from the waves of innocent brats to waves from those who were a year above me. It is where I can be myself with the words I chose to surf on a piece of paper. It gave me a voice which spoke louder than speaking itself. It was my one way ticket to escape the African upbringing revolving around that “Children are seen not heard” where I cannot voice my opinion, express my thoughts into verbal format and that suppression followed me like a ball tied to a chain on my ankle dragging the heavy burden of being passive. Writing was my way out.

I remember during an English lesson at secondary school in the beginning of year 10, my teacher assigned us to write an incident in our lives as a homework assignment. The only incident I can think at the time is when I was called a “Paki”. That was the immediate light bulb that shone my motivation and the adrenaline rate ignited of a person at the start line of a 5K run to pick up a pen and scrawled onto my exercise book pushing away the doubt, the anxiety and vacate the world I was helplessly sucked into. When my teacher read it over the weekend, she made a compliment that I never forget that: “I read your story and I really enjoyed reading it and it seems like you wrote it from the heart”. Little did it know that left an unconscious mark in my mind telling me that I was destined to be a writer as I just pick up a pen and write a letter, a word, a sentence, a paragraph according to the beating my of heart along with the distortion of my mind.

However, that was short lived by the thundering invasion of the “Special Needs” label, my biggest tormentor, arch nemesis, arch enemy, the bully in my mental playground who was not a person but a label, a word that had more power than me and belonged to government. My mind was a hostage to that label.  It dominated and corroded every fibre of my confidence, my self worth and the ability to speak my mind and defuse confrontation only to be engulfed by the resentment and rage. That is when writing came to the rescue. It was “The pen is mightier than the sword” moment and the only weapon to help me to fight back against that label or any label thrown at me sending me into a pit of victim mentality and focus was the antidote against the self doubt that tormented me and creates a world where I can be a survivor and forget being a victim in a world I have no control of. Sheer egoism was one of the four motives he (Orwell) listed and that caught my eye. Writing, how he states it:

“Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death; to get your back on the grown ups that snub your childhood etc, etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great masses of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class”(p4,5)

He was right. It is the most powerful effective non violent method of revenge to get back at our enemies, my school tormentors, the system that enslaved me on the “special needs” statement leaving me exposed to detrimental mislabelled connotations of “Autistic?” , “Asperger’s”, and “Emotional and Behavioural problems” and the racists that call me “Paki”, “Nigger” and other authority figures and labels mostly the ‘special needs’ label that pained me, put me down, humiliated me, excluded me that led me to put my depression, my resentment, my anger, my distress and outrage into something constructive, thus writing came to my rescue. I need to read as well in order to plan the words I am going to use to form a sentence to show the world and my tormentors what I think of them and it will stay with them after I depart from this world.

Writing helped me build a bridge to walk away from my past and away from the anxiety on what the future holds to the other side where I am levelheaded in the present moment. The proverb: “The pen is mightier than the sword” fits the motive as I can chase away the ghost of self-doubt, create conflicts and neutalise conflicts simultaneously. It helps and encourage me to brainstorm ideas for a story to help me solve the problems in my life and the lives of my future audience to neutralise their own problems in their lives and lives of many generations to come.

Yes, I definitely agree with him saying: “All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery”. Writing was the opportunity for me to become more selfish in a good way as it taught me, I can assert my own voice and identity and broke the silence of my enslaved passivity and overwhelming emotions I bottled up for longer periods of time. Instead of writing what people want me to write, I write what I want to write and write what I know. As long as I write, I am safe in my little world full of words, similes, metaphors, idioms and paragraphs from a world that is a base of psychological uncertainty, hostility and corruption.

 

 

That is why I write.