Writing Down the Bones: Why Do I Write

For one of my writing down the bones activity, my theme was "Why Do I Write".

This particular activity motivates us to meditate on the reasons for which we write. The author mentions the fact that our motives and intentions really affect what we write and how we write it. This is precisely why it encourages us to do this exercise. Evaluating our motives for writing consists of getting ourselves into an introspective point of view in which reflect on those emotions and feelings that circle our heads when the time for writing comes. According to the author, it is very important to have our minds focused on our reasons for writing because those motives that thrive us toward it are what give sense and meaning to our work. Also, when our reasons are clear, our direction is more assertive and our message goes to a deeper extent into our writing. Writing in depth will result in more substance and therefore our writing will carry not just significant content but also revolve around a profound mood and feeling that will be connected to our selves.

The exercise proposes for us to brainstorm a list of reasons why we write, regardless of how simple or meaningless some may seem. Mentioning a few examples, a reason for writing could be because you are stressed, because you're having trouble communication with someone, because you had a bad day, etc. After stating in your mind several reasons, the exercise tells us to pick one of them as the epicenter of our writing. It even suggests selecting more than one and combine them to try different things. Regardless of how you do it, the purpose of the exercise is to canalize different thoughts, ideas, emotions, experiences and situations, into reasons for our writing. Having our reasons rooted in our minds will give us a chance to write and later on look back on what we wrote with a sense of awareness of our motives at the time. Understanding your motives will help you bring forth a message that you can re-read and find time after time. Even if time goes by and we read something we wrote long ago, we can be able to interpret our feelings at the time of our writing, helping us to better our understanding of our ideas and our writing process.