Quite a profound question to start off the week, don’t you
think? It’s one that I don’t talk about much here, since the cartography always
seems to take precedence over everything else. I also think this is something that
I have avoided talking about because the truth might not be what people are
expecting to see, or, more likely, what I expect people are expecting to hear,
if that makes any sense.
We’ve been brought up to think that writers have some form
of compulsion to write, that they were born that way, with words struggling to
escape their thoughts and that the only way to release those words is by
writing.
I suppose that’s true for most writers but I don’t think that’s
me. Though I often find myself edging to write when I’m not, I don’t think that
it’s a compulsion or something that I can’t live without.
I think I’m a lazy person by nature, and I hate that. I’ve
tried setting up routines where I can force myself into doing a set amount of
writing every day, though I have never managed anything that maintains a
semblance of regularity. The closest is writing during
NaNoWriMo (and
no I’m not taking part this year) when I really plan ahead and psych myself up.
I became complacent when I was single, writing when I wanted
to, often devoting entire days and weekends to writing. Now I’m no longer
single and living with my partner things become more difficult. Working shifts
and odd hours makes things even worse. I get to write on mornings when I’m
working late or days off when my partner is working, though I find it very difficult
to work in the evenings, which is my preferred time, due to wanting to spend
time with my family. This has really taken a toll on my hobbies.
Ok, so that answers why I don’t write, but not why I write.
I think, after perusing my posts here and elsewhere, it’s pretty
clear that my focus is mostly on mapmaking, and I don’t mind that, really. I
enjoy drawing the maps, though I need to work on my productivity (I tend to
waste a lot of time doing things in steps that could all be one in one big step
at the end, thus wasting lots of time) I spent quite a bit of money on a
Photoshop course which got me an ACE degree, which helped with my cartography.
Though even the cartography is ultimately an ends to a mean.
I am creating a world, and that world needs maps, mostly for
my own sense of completeness than anything else. One of the reasons my maps
take ages to make, compared with other people, is I want to make sure that
everything is correct – if I add a city, I want to make sure its correctly catalogued
in the ubiquitous Encyclopaedia Elyden so that I can reference it quickly in
the future if need be. Sometimes I’ll need to edit old entries to match the new
ones or update regional histories to match changes made to borders or
territories. I also have quite a few large ‘work maps’ that I use for my
writing that need to be updated whenever I add a new place or feature, so I end
up spending time updating those. There’s a lot more stuff that goes on behind
the scenes than you might thing at first.
So, I write as an extension of my worldbuilding. I’ve
created this world, am constantly expanding it, might as well do something with
it, right?
Is that reason enough to write? Am I a ‘real’ writer? Does
the fact that I’m not published make a difference? What if I ever was published,
would that class me as a real writer even though I’ll always consider myself a
worldbuilder first?
