Posted Tuesday March 17th 2009
by Patrick Ness

Welcome back!  The writer in residency is only a week old, and already I’ve got my first question. Dogflea from Brazil (yes, truly, Dogflea from Brazil) wants to start with a biggie, so here we go:

'What moves you to write in the first place?'

Now, Dogflea (aka Celine), felt this question so important she put it in all caps, and I tend to agree. It’s the most important question of all, and I have a simple answer: I write because it feels like I have to. If I didn’t, the consequences for me would be too great to bear. (A brief warning that there are rough waters ahead in today’s blog, but hold on tight, we’ll make it to the shore together.)

The authors I love, really love, are those that seem to be writing entirely to feed an irresistible compulsion. Nicola Barker, Peter Carey, Ali Smith, people whose prose burns with fire and urgency, burns with the energy of trying to appease some goddess of writing before her dogs tear you to pieces.

Over dramatic? Possibly, but why do you write? Is it for a better reason? If it’s to make money, for example, you need to have your head examined. All that work for a breath-stranglingly narrow chance of just possibly eking out, say, a £2500 advance for three year’s labour? That’s a weekly salary of £16.03 for chipping off a bit of your soul and putting it on paper.

But no, I don’t believe that of you. I don’t believe that’s why you’d be reading this blog or seriously thinking about your own writing, but do ask yourself, why do you write? If your answer isn’t quite as death-defying (perhaps even literally, as in do you write to defy death?), well, why not? If your writing doesn’t feel like a thing that would cause you pain not to do, a thing that must be, why would your writing be worth reading?

I’m serious. It sounds obvious, but how you feel about your writing affects how your readers will feel about it. If it doesn’t feel like it had to be written, why will it feel like it has to be read?

(This works in simple storytelling terms, too, by the way. If you’re not feeling scared when writing a scary passage, your reader sure isn’t going to feel scared by it. There’s one tremendously upsetting thing that happens in The Knife of Never Letting Go, and the reason I know it works is because I was upset when I wrote it and upset again every time I rewrote it. Guess what? That passage upsets people. In the way I want it to, I hasten to add, but you see my point.)

To put it all another way, if you’re writing a book and not trying to make it great (as opposed to merely good or even acceptable), then you’re never going to write a great book. Never. You still might not, of course – most books aren’t masterpieces – but if you at least strive, you might end up with something powerful anyway, something that grabs people because it grabbed you while you wrote it. Nobody, and I mean nobody, not readers, not publishers, not agents, not even your family, are going to want to read it otherwise.

Now, rough waters nearly over, peaceful shores in sight. There isn’t an external test (certainly not from me) that decides whether you write this way. It’s up to you, and you don’t need to tell anyone but yourself. But I really believe that telling yourself that you write because you must is the crucial first step. Don’t be afraid. Well, actually, maybe be afraid, but do it anyway.

Why do I write? Because I have to. And you?

Some housekeeping

Right, some quick housekeeping notes on how this blog is going to go. In addition to all the aforementioned activity, I’ll be returning here every ten days or so, talking about writing and occasionally getting your hackles up. I’ll also be adding new writing tips at roughly the same rate on the tips pages. I’ve had a request to put the tips on an RSS feed like the blog, but there’s a technical hitch about that for now. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I’ll let you know through the blog whenever I update them.

Which I’ve done now!  New tips up, still about starting out, but in terms of thinking of structure. 

Now, go write something great.