Veracity or Self-Expression?
What is the Purpose of Writing
There are many reasons why people write. And those reasons can vary (even for the same person – depending on the time and place and subject matter). But today I want to focus on two: truth and self-expression. Do we write to say something, or because we want to be known to be the one to say it? Or, to put it another way, do we write something because we believe it is important and needs to be written, or do we write because we believe it needs to be said by us?
Of course, if there is no truth and all is interpretation and narrative – if we each have our own personal truth and there is no objective reality – then all writers are writing for the latter reason.
I don’t believe that, and I’ll assume most of my readers don’t either.
With that aside, I think it’s fairly obvious that most writers write for a mixture of the two reasons, although I think most of the honest writers try to write for the first reason even if there is a tiny bit of the latter in their reasoning. The desire for recognition is natural, and it’s a catalyst for human achievement, so it isn’t a bad thing to have at least a little of it – as long as one keeps it secondary to service of the truth.
Extrapolating out to the general public, we can say that all people speak things both because they believe those things are important to say, and because they want to be the ones to say it. So, this question of why we say and write the things we do applies to everyone – not just to writers.
Perhaps we can separate people into two categories. Those who are primarily driven to write and say what they do for the first reason. And those who are primarily driven by the second.
Truth:
It isn’t just nonfiction writers who write for truth. Veracity isn’t just for journalists. Fiction writers talk all the time about “being true to the story,” or “writing something true.” Many fiction writers write a story because they believe there is something true in it, something real, something worth writing, something good and right (and perhaps even noble). They’ll tell you that certain stories “need to be written.” Some writers will tell you that they are nothing but a vehicle for the story to get out into the world.