Why I write

Sam Godfrey
Opinions Editor

A lot of kids grow up spending their Saturday mornings in front of a glowing television, eating a bowl of high sugar cornstarch and fighting with their siblings over which 20-minute toy advertisement they’d like to watch. That was much different from the scene that played out at my home. While my peers ensured the success of the cartoon and insulin industries, I was at my kitchen table with leftover pasta, kneeling on the chair so I could better lean over the Globe and Mail. And okay, I was probably reading the comics, but I always ventured into the News section at one point or another, just to see what my dad was reading.

My classmates exchanged insults along the lines of “stupid” and “dumb”, but I was always taught those were bad words. This was just as well, because they lacked the real zing I was looking for, choosing instead to claim my sister was “worse than Bin Ladin.” My mother asked me how I even knew who he was, so I reminded her: “Mom, you forget: I read The Economist now.”

I always knew what I liked, and that was reading. My parents even had to devise strategies for fear that reading in the dark would ruin my eyesight (ha! I showed them). I spent so much time poring over books and newspapers and magazines, absorbing their stories, that it was only logical when I began to write them too. Key word being “began.” I rarely, if ever, finished them. My desk drawer at home is littered with notebooks containing the beginnings of what I’m sure would have been epic tales with real depth and meaning (Jenny’s New Friend), astute commentaries on modern society (Mary and Alexandra Play Hide and Go Seek). Of course, the prose was beautiful; so sublime I dare to say Orwell would shed a tear of hope for the future of his beloved language.

I didn’t write because I was good at it though, I wrote because I admired authors. I spent some time writing, but I spent a lot more imagining myself writing. Ordinarily I saw myself as a successful author, sitting in a library three stories (no pun intended) high, weaving delightfully entrancing adventures for my devoted readers.

I grew out of those dreams quickly though: I traded them for others. I traded images of marble statues for scenes of dust motes lolling in a sunbeam. An abandoned hunting shack in a part of the woods no one knew replaced my ritzy mansion. The sound of a creek nearby, the wind the evergreens, and chattering of friendly (but nevertheless distant) creatures was interrupted only by the sharp shifting of my typewriter’s keys.

I wasn’t writing for the end goal anymore, I was writing because I enjoyed it. My daydreams of dishevelled, but charming, cabins mirrored this.

Of course, being at university there is rarely a deserted cabin on hand, but there are other people who like writing. When I write here, aside from (the ever-enjoyable) assigned essays, it’s because I’m excited to contribute to a collaborative work. I’m energized by more than the simple pleasure of writing my piece; I can feel the editors, illustrators, and layout gods working with me to put together, each month, that glossy labour of love.

And now, when I’ve been reading more of the Globe and The Economist than the funnies (oh okay: I still only read The Economist’s cartoon), I’ve started to feel drawn from that perfect hole in the woods. Sometimes I want to don a plain, short-brimmed hat, stick a card that reads, “PRESS” in the dirty ribbon and get a story from the source. I don’t know why I need that hat to visit troops in Iraq, or attend a cultural rally of some sort, but I imagine it feels snug on my head.

I still want to make fantastic tales spring from my typewriter, but I also wanted the grungy glamour of whatever that hat is.

So why do I write?

I write for the Saturday-morning cartoons I never saw. I write for leftover pasta spilled on the comics page. I write for my dad leaving The Economist on the counter, and I write for my mom shaking her head and smiling when I picked it up. I write for my eyes, sore from reading in the dark, for notebooks half-full of clumsily penciled words, and for the mansion I wished I had. I write for cabins, typewriters, hats with brims and everything they represent.

I write for the energy it takes, and the energy it gives me.

        @samwisegodfrey