Because I Can't Not Do It

I've always written.

Pretty much from the first moment I picked up a pen I've been committing words to paper, and in the last decade or so the computer screen, and I've never once considered why it is that I do this.

Part of it I think is my inability to just sit and do nothing. Even if I'm watching a movie, then to me it's not just a form of entertainment, but a lesson in how the written word, in this case a script, is constructed and translated into a series of moving images using people as a mouthpiece.

Likewise reading. Though I derive immense pleasure from diving into and getting lost in a good book, there's always part of my brain that's analysing the plot, the characters, the language used, and thinking that there's nothing I love more than writing myself.

I get asked a lot where I find the time to write, and my answer is usually the same. I basically don't really watch television, save for those programmes that I know I want to see, or that I've read or heard about and want to check out, but I rarely just turn on the tube to see what's on.

This does mean that occasionally I'll miss something special, but in my mind, if it's that good then word of mouth will get to me through some medium or other and then I can pick it up on DVD and watch it at my leisure.

Friends and colleagues occasionally ask me why I write. It's a good question. After all, chances are that nobody is ever going to read much of what I produce, but that's not why I do it. I don't write for posterity, although I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me smile that maybe somebody will happen across one of the blogs that I write, this being the main one at the moment, or will pick up of the books I've published and for a short while be entertained by my words.

Last year I wrote a book on horror movies called To Die For : 25 Saturday Night Fright Flicks about two dozen and one of my favourite genre flicks. In a few weeks I'll be launching this into the world, via the likes of amazon and play and lulu, and again I'd be lying if the thought of someone reading it and nodding to themselves at my thoughts while they read it didn't make me smile.

Likewise the semi-autobiographical account of rock music in the 1980s that I'm currently working on. It's not going to change the world, but after I'm dead and gone (hopefully not for a good while yet!) it'll at least prove that I was here, and provide a record of one person's experiences, passions and thoughts on what was a very important time of their life. One of my peers might even give it to their kids and say "This is what it was like when I was a teenager."

That feeling of leaving a legacy, though, isn't why I write. The honest answer, and the only one that I have really, is that I write because I can't not write. It's what I am, who I am and what I'm all about.

Maybe you're out there reading this and for a few minutes will be entertained, or be distracted from the trials and tribulations of your life, and maybe you won't. Either way, just by committing these words to the ether it's fulfilling me, so even if nobody even knows about this particular corner of cyberspace that I'm slowly fillng up, then it doesn't matter, because just by writing this I'm happy, and feel as though I've achieved something creative and positive today.

If you're out there and reading this, thanks for stopping by, and have a good day.

As you were. :-)