Why do I need to write stories?

I don’t really know. But what I do know is that my thirst for stories virtually trumps any other interest in my life. It’s only in recent years that I’ve come to make the connection between my story making and my work. Just about everything in the world revolves around stories.

Recently, in The Age newspaper, in an excellent article called, Fiction, the fact that makes us human, Sam de Brito makes a compelling argument for why fiction is important in our lives, and how it relates to everything we do and think. The ability to imagine things that didn’t exist has led to all sorts of useful innovations, and it has helped humans to empathise – to step in another’s shoes, so to speak.

Academics such as Harvard University’s Steve Pinker​ have long argued that the rise of empathy and the West’s regard for human life in recent centuries has much to do with the power of the written word, fiction and its mass dissemination via the printing press.

If not for these innovations, billions of people would have been unable to walk in another’s shoes, to live in the heads of strangers, see with their eyes, feel their joys and pain. This process has, of course, been magnified via photography, film, TV and the internet but the engine of mass empathy began with the written word and the novel.

And so I guess one of the elements of fiction that I find irresistible is the unlimited possibilities that fiction brings to the table. There are so many ways in which fiction connects to everyday living, to hopes for the future, to our understanding the many, mundane realities of each and every day.

Do I think I’m any good at writing these stories? Truly not. In fact, I often wonder why I do it, or berate myself for not starting earlier so I could spend a couple more decades honing my skills.

One thing I will never understand is why writing is referred to as a craft. I really don’t get that. I am a knitter, and I get how that is a craft. There are how-to books that tell you explicitly what to do. I am talking step by minute bloody step. Exactly how many stitches to cast on, how long to make each piece, how to decrease, shape, embellish, cast off. Everything is spelled out. Writing is not like this. Sure there are mountains of books written about how to write well, and which focus on specific genres. But they are not how-tos. In fact, as James Scott Bell has written, it’s best to leave thinking about the rules aside when writing, or risk producing bland, clunky and self-conscious text.

Being hooked on fiction means I have to go back to it, regardless that I fear the tangles I get stuck in, and regardless that I think my prose could always be so much better. It’s an addition, and so I keep going back with the belief it will be better to do it, than to not do it at all.