Why do I write?

"What do you write about?" - I get this question a lot, or similarly, "Why do you write?" - usually from people who have never read anything I have written or from people who just have a genuine curiosity.  I write a few blogs, one is about my Health, it was originally a blog similar to this where I wrote about the things that were on my mind but slowly my Health became such a focus that in the end I deleted all other posts and decided to devote the blog solely to my health.  As for this blog, it has become the main outlet for my thoughts about all manner of things.

I write short stories, and I write longer fiction which usually caters to an LGBT audience, in particular Young Adult fiction which is basically another way of saying "not for children" and I also write technical documents and guides about things I know a lot about - for example I wrote a book about programming in Java and plan on writing others as part of a series. 

In terms of the fiction I write, and this blog, they both represent a form of self-therapy.  Writing allows me to process my thoughts and my feelings in a constructive way.  It also lets me document how I think and how I feel in this moment, so that I can look back on it in the future.  I often go back and read my old work and see how much I have grown as a person, how my priorities shift, and how much certain things occupied my mind and the impact they had on my knowing or unknowingly.

Some of the time a piece of writing can contain just one word somewhere within it that has a whole story pinned to it that isn't divulged within the piece but seeing it myself triggers all those memories to come flooding back.  Words and places associated with certain people can bring back a flood of memories.  I guess you could say in a way that I write as a method of organizing my mind and my memories into pieces that are easier to process.  As for fiction and the characters I create, often times those character represent either parts of myself and my own personality or those of other people that I want to confront.  By giving it a name and a structure you are able to deconstruct it in a way that lets you tear it apart and look inside without causing damage to the self.

Above all else I write for myself first and foremost.  While it is nice to know that people read what I write, that's not why I do it.  This is for me more than it is for you, I just happen to post it online for the world to see, in the hopes that other people might see it and recognise something within themselves and realise they're not alone in their thoughts or their feelings which can be very reassuring, to be able to say "well at least I'm not the only one who thinks that" is often enough to make things bearable and easier to get through.