Why I Write: From the Rags of Time

I imagine I started writing stories for my father. A return gift, perhaps. After all, he invented stories every night for me long after I had exhausted his Scheherazadean bank. The rest of the day he was lost to me, shrouded in the study with his books and pipe smoke. The stories I scribbled were my first love letters. And he, my first analyst. “You are too self-absorbed,” said he, never one to mince his words. That time, I wrote to overcome having disappointed him and to assuage my hurt. I wrote to renew love which felt under peril.

In the beginning, there was mimesis. I imitated; therefore, I was. Embarrassingly, my first-ever story was plagiarized. But for one heart-stopping moment, my parents looked at me with some surprise, and I heard my own voice, not liking its thinness. They patted me proudly. “That's pretty good.” “I read it in a book,” I confessed instantly. “Well, don't copy next time,” they said without much surprise. Perhaps we imitate to bring ourselves into existence. Writing allowed some shape while everything else threatened with shapelessness.

The need to write probably summons us from different locations. The impulse comes from an urgent need to write myself into being. How else would I know I am? There is a forgotten Indian folk tale (Ramanujan 1991) in which stories live inside a man. They get furious as he won't “tell” them to anyone. So they confer with each other and plot murder to free themselves and find a more generous host. They go looking for a teller. What happens to all such untold bits? Is that what makes one restless? Not being able to tell ourselves our story? Are we looking for a teller?

In Pirandello's (1922) play, six characters search for a playwright who can bring them into existence, or they may remain “unrealized characters.” Bion (1970) imagined thoughts to be like these unrealized characters. Thoughts need thinkers, like experiences need minds—to cast shadows, to shape, and to edit. To keep and to let go. Writing to me is thi