What Makes One a Writer?

No one happy with themselves would write something to be read by people. That could happen only if that happiness acquires excitement and thrill and one wants to share it with others. Generally writing comes naturally when other sources of fulfillment have been closed. Creativity can be compared to a stream of water which needs to find an outlet when stress and suffering seem to block its flow. A heaviness of hours, said Shelley, was chaining and bowing him, a person who was “tameless, and swift, and proud.”

Oppression of some kind creates the need to write and blow off steam. The oppression could be in one’s place of work, at the governmental level, or even in the family. This happens when subjugation at some plane annoys to the extent that one is driven to stay away from others and create shapes with words. Creation means finding a kind of container; a form, or shape to pour one’s feelings into, because straightforward expression is not possible or permitted.

Not all people will become writers due to oppression. Some will take to different routes of escape from their real worlds. Some can take to drunkenness. Some can start finding refuge in the company of those that please them in some way; they can start believing that they love the sympathetic person.. Some can even start becoming insane. Shakespeare observed that the lunatic, the lover, and the poet are essentially similar in the way they imagine things. To write, one must acquire a passion to create something out of nothing. But the imagination and one’s experience, should be frenzied enough to take creativity through to the finished product.

Literary writers have been witness to some extremely pain-giving experiences. They have seen from close how delicate human life is. Also, how people become victims for no reason or for real reasons that they’ve fostered. Writers often see how man becomes little more than the sport of the powers that be and if they have the power of expression, they show this to the reader.