Why Write for No One? Celebrating the Drive to Write

Writing is hard. Yet, many of us do it for no one, for free, for fun. Why?

The answers are various:

• It's fun to imagine stories.
• It's fascinating to explore other minds.
• It's thrilling.
• It's therapeutic.
• It's cathartic.
• It's my dream.
• I love the art of arranging words.
• I love reading and reading makes me want to write stories.
• I cannot stop myself from telling stories.

Artists of other media and trades surely use the same reasons among their friends and peers. It's natural for us. For non-artists, though, these answers are unsatisfactory. You're not being published. You're not being paid. Is anyone even reading what you write?

For the person whose work is not their passion, money is the reason they do what they do. Some of those people might have hobbies. An investment banker who knits or a receptionist who fishes or a police officer who builds LEGO models exerts a significant amount of effort and practices great patience without any expected return. Zero dollars, zero acclaim. It's what they enjoy and that's enough payoff.

Similarly, there's nothing wrong with writing while having no interest in being read. Writing can be a hobby.

The difference between the unpublished writer and the hobbyist is deceptively simple: it is our desire to, at some point, be published. We are the writers who write for no one but who also write with care and passion and with the hope of one day being read, of being loved, of being paid.

Writing that's for no one but ourselves is not wasted. It's practice, it's habit-forming, it's unstoppable: it's the thing we're thinking about even when we're doing other, paying work.

Whether it's literary fiction, fan fiction, a personal blog, song lyrics or something else, every piece of the unpublished writer's work is another step toward publication.

What is Publication?

Publication doesn't necessarily mean a book deal. For the unpublished writer, it can simply mean graduating to a thousand readers from a hundred, or to a hundred from ten. It can mean selling a piece to a prominent journal or website. It can mean going viral. It can simply mean corresponding with five enthusiastic fans via email or Twitter.

Publication is defined by each of us. And each of us knows that publication is not the end of the journey; it just resets the meter. The published author's next goal looks familiar: publication, again.

Why write for no one? The question is unimportant. If you love writing, write. Write it in a notebook, type it on a computer, post it to a blog or your social media, mail it to your sibling or your friend, tape it to the inside of your car's rear window and let people read it while you're parked at a restaurant--just put it out there. That pressure is enough to make you edit carefully, trust me.

It's not easy to write for no one, even if you love writing. It's hard work and it's easy to get discouraged.

The thing is, getting paid to write doesn't make it easier.

I spent a year at a digital marketing agency writing for clients' blogs. The money didn't make the writing easier. I still cared about producing the highest-quality writing. I still toiled over the small edits and stressed about word choices. The money only made justifying my writing to others easier.

Stop trying to justify your passion to people who insist on asking you why. There's no help to be had from them, anyway. It's your passion and it's your responsibility.

So take responsibility and do it. Like everyone who's ever written a piece on getting published says, you can't get published if you don't write.

Write because you love to write. Write for no one, because you're not actually writing for no one. You're writing for yourself.