Why I Write: My Rant on Writing
by Carl McRoy | 27 June 2024 |
I write because I dance better with my fingertips than on my tiptoes.
I write for the same reason many people talk to themselves: they enjoy intelligent conversation.
I write for practical reasons because, as one of my undergrad professors chanted, “People forget but paper remembers,” and virtual paper virtually remembers forever, even though I may have forgotten where I saved that draft of profundities that’ll reward me with an advance I can retire on.
Because people forget and paper remembers, I always try to immediately email the highlights of important meetings to everyone involved, so that people don’t forget what needs to be remembered or remember things that never were.
I write to get my insides on the outside, like I’m performing brain surgery on me with self-hypnosis as anesthesia.
I love to write in a variety of ways I imagine would annoy one of my former professors, whose favorite phrase was akin to “I would’ve written it this way,” to which I replied something like, “Why don’t you write it that way, hand out 45 copies of it, and let all of us put our names at the tops so we can all be As— OK?” all because I didn’t aspire to emulate his colossal commentary on Moby Dick.
I write because I love the scrawling of pen and pencil against paper, as well as the anticipated eye-rolling at my overuse of alliteration.
I write because I love the screeching of chalkboards—or at least throwing together characters on a screen that create internal fingernail scraping on the blackboards of the reader’s mind.
I need to write because sometimes I’m the only one who understands me—and even when I can’t understand me, it’s a way I can look me in the I.
I write when I want to antagonize my buddies in a football chat after my team beats their teams; and I suppose I should write about why my team should change its name from the Chiefs, and why I consider them my team when I own 0% stock in the organization and earn dividends according to my investment. But also, I feel like I should get something back because I pay stadium taxes whenever I rent a car from Kansas City International Airport after waiting in line wondering why it’s considered “international” when I don’t think anyone uses it as a port to or from other nations.
I write to promote a moral view, as Anne Lamott puts it, or for propaganda’s sake, as W.E.B. Du Bois argues in a point of chagrining agreement with Marcus Garvey.
If I don’t write my story, then his story may define, distort, diminish, and delete my story once it’s published as history.
I write when I need to detangle my overcooked angel hair ideas and try to straighten and repackage my dendrites, as if they’d never been dropped into cerebrospinal fluid at 212°.
I write short notes to hopefully inspire my kids, who once believed I was one of the smartest people on the globe, but now seem to listen to YouTubers, Instagrammers, and TikTokkers more than me. And if they read this they should know that I know there’s an alternate spelling for those who make TikTok videos, but that’s too close to an old-fashioned word for smoking weed—even though that might be appropriate since the platform is addictive and mood-altering and I don’t have time or space to answer people’s arguments claiming that marijuana doesn’t create physical dependence while they blow it out their nostrils every day.
I write to preserve that which rots if hidden and hoarded.
I write to release excess synaptic energy. As Kahlil Gibran said in The Prophet, “You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thought.” But unfortunately, this doesn’t always coincide with deadlines.
I write to spite people who don’t dig my writing—and I know “dig” is old, but afros made a comeback after I’ve been bald for decades, so why can’t I dig “dig” as long as I don’t Dig Dug, because I never dug that game in the first place—dig?
I write because I love playing with language like a child playing with LEGOs®, or a hustler shooting 9-ball, or a practical joker joking with humorless victims, or my dog who runs back to me with the frisbee yet growls when I try to loosen it from his gritting teeth.
I write to give back to the Giver of every good and perfect gift, because you can’t beat God’s giving no matter how you try.
Carl McRoy is an ordained minister in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, host of Message magazine’s “Your Liberation Library,” and author of Yell at God and Live, R U Tuff Enuff? and Impediments to Power. He enjoys quality time with family, posing as an amateur historian, and shooting pool.
