Suffering.  In Buddhism, one of the teachings is that of “life is suffering.”  No, it doesn’t mean that all life aspects of life leads to suffering.  Instead, the suffering we experience is due to the impermanence of life itself, i.e. all things change with time.   It is the same with writing.  As you grow as a writer, your writing changes, morphs in ways that you may least expect.

Perhaps your favourite authors are among those acknowledged as prize worthy.  You spend hours pouring over every sentence in every book they have ever written, hoping to emulate them…but then realising that you fall severely short of the mark.  Your writing simply will not conform to your expectation.  Equally disturbing is understanding that your destiny is not to be the next Toni Morrison or Charles Dickens.

Still, you continue to write because you cannot help yourself but to write.  Your writing reflects your suffering.  It changes as you encounter life, find success, make mistakes, discover love, and regret loss.  Like death, writing looms over your life, defining it.  Regardless of whether you choose to embrace yourself as a writer or hide from it, writing is an inevitable part of you.

What’s the point of being a writer? You might as well ask What’s the point of living?  There is no point.  Writing is an end in itself.  Writers write.  Like breathing, there is no choice about it.

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I write because / I suffer because / I write because I suffer/ I suffer because I write