Writing sucks. It’s a chore. It’s frustrating. It’s work. I would much rather be pal-ing around with my friends, or eating cookies in bed, or doing some sort of adventure sport, or drinking beers, or wearing a turtleneck. So why do I write?

For the finished product of course. It’s not about the journey. F the journey. The journey hurts my back and my eyes. Why do women get pregnant? Not for the pregnancy. I’m told those are unpleasant. They get pregnant because they want a baby. Well me too. I’m not the nuturing type, and a pregnancy would really ruin my figure, so i’m not about to get knocked up with a real baby, but a word-baby, I can carry that to term no problem.

Humans have an insatiable drive to create. I am human. Therefore, I have an insatiable drive to create. Artists create art. Musicians create music. Architects, buildings. My fingers are too clumsy for art, my ears, too unrefined for music. I could possibly be a passable architect, but I was once  told that most newly trained architects work in a firm as an assistant to the master. I like to be in charge, so architecture is out. Word-smithing though, that I can do.

Building a piece of literature, no matter whether it is a fictional story, or a letter to a business colleague, or an instructional manual containing proper procedures for scripting C++ programming algorithms, involves a certain flow. It is not unlike solving a complex math problem. You add and subtract until you finally achieve a balanced equation where all your sums add up, and when you are done, entropy has been avoided for one more day, and the universe can continue to exist without dissolving into atomic chaos. All that, just from writing something down.

I write to become immortal. I think this is the reason for all creative endeavor. No matter what you make, be it a child, or a painting, or a story,  you do it because you know that your existence is fleeting, and you want to leave something of yourself behind. Tolkien and Zelazny are dead, yet I know them. I’ve met them. I still see them every time I open one of their books.

The more I write, the less I fear death, because I know I too may yet live forever. That’s why I’m sitting hunched uncomfortably at my desk right now, instead of playing video games in the living room or pounding weights at the gym or chasing the almighty dollar. Sweet muscles and a fat wallet are nice. Eternal life is better.