Why I Write

I stole the title for this essay from Didion, who herself stole it from Orwell, as she readily admits. Like Didion, the reason I stole it was that I like the sound of the words: Why I Write. I don’t, unlike the two of them, intend to go over why I write. I instead want to go over why I write here.

I decided this year to focus on building things, in the lens of prioritising creation over curation. One way I want to express that theme is through writing more, and, in particular, publishing it in whatever capacity this is; I like Naval’s notion of doing your work in the arena. This post also helped convince me. It seems timely, since I’m starting college.

I do not know how often I will write. I would wager it will be the sort of thing where there are weeks where the dishwasher isn’t run and days where it is run two or maybe even three times. Hopefully I chug out a piece or two every month. As an aside, the first dozen or so of these essays will be polished versions of previously written work, a springboard of sorts.

Most of what I write will be semi-trivial and naive, and I really dislike that. I was the type of writer in high school to hate peer-reviews (i.e. I hated people reading my unfinished work), who would write sentence by sentence, pausing after each one to reread the whole paragraph, not moving on until I considered it perfect. And when I finally inked a full piece I would go to sleep knowing that the next day I’d grimace while I read it. Obviously I know I shouldn’t expect to write anything profound, but I really want to, you know? So if you enjoy anything I’ve written I do truly appreciate that.

I want to mention I have lofty and semi-delusional goals. I aspire one day to be published in Adroit or write the short story in the New Yorker. And I know that’s difficult even for a full-time writer, and I dedicate the bulk of my time to comparatively soulless endeavours. But I take to heart the Larry Page quote that “Even if you fail at your ambitious thing, it's very hard to fail completely. That's the thing that people don't get.”

On that note, I hope to get into a nice rhythm a la Chekhov where “[m]edicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress. When I get fed up with one, I spend the night with the other. Though it is irregular, it is less boring this way, and besides, neither of them loses anything through my infidelity.” wherein my medicine is the hedge fund I run. That could be really nice.