Lara's Wanderings

Why do I write?

I was looking back at my posts, and I realized I have never fully addressed this very common question. In many places, I touch upon the subject, but never do I fully answer it. The short answer is that I write because I must. Of course, for many non-writers and non-artist, this sounds like nonsense, so I will unpack my answer.

From the time I was a little girl, I made up fairy tales and told stories. I would create scripts for my brother, friends, and cousins to act out. When I babysat, I would tell stories about why a certain plant had heart-shaped leaves. I made-up games about Santa Clause living in my Grandmother’s locked office during Christmas time. I won an award in first grade for a little book that I illustrated. Honestly, I have never run out of ideas. I have a binder of stories and poems I wrote as a child.

You can read in other places why I didn’t become a professional writer until after my son was born, but his birth was so full of trauma that all my reservations melted away. Throughout my life, and especially then, I turned to the one thing that was my biggest stress reliever: books.

First, I read constantly, but then my old story-telling nature demanded to be heard. I wrote as a release. My emotions poured out in my fictional fantasy world. I gave me an escape. After a while, it also gave me a place to work out many questions about pain and suffering. Finally, it ended up being about hope.

The Christian in me at that time would have been compelled to say I wrote for the glory of God or to minister to the lost, but my books have never been allegories. They are Christian because I am a Christian. I see the whole monotheistically. I see a purpose for our lives. I can’t write a world that doesn’t make sense to me, but these books don’t hold the salvation message.

To be honest, I didn’t start out writing for the glory of God. I’m too selfish a creature for that. In fact, I wasn’t originally sure that I would even publish my first book. I wrote because I need to be encouraged that everything would work out alright. I needed hope. Most of the books I read lacked this hope and there was a feeling of nihilism and despair that made heroes do questionable things and optimistic character turn into cynics.

It took me ten years to finish my first book and publish it. As I worked on it, I discovered I wasn’t the only one who needed hope. I met teens and young adults who dealt with crippling anxiety and depression. I met people with disabilities who had been told their whole lives that they couldn’t do anything or become anything. I noticed a whole full of angry despairing people. These people needed stories they could connect with that spoke to their hearts and emotions in the way C.S. Lewis and Tolkien had described.

C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and the Inklings believed that fictional stories helped us see the world in a different way than we are capable of when just dealing with the here and now. A fairy tale encourages us to dream and ask “what if?” A hero or heroine who we relate to can bring us through the path of trial and despair to the other side. The message we tell ourselves that “nothing will change” is turned around to “there is a purpose.” We begin to imagine ourselves overcoming giants and dragons. That optimistic emotion sub-consciously starts to see our real trials in the light of these tales.

So, the long answer to this question is that I want to lift the spirit of the down-hearted, bring joy and hope to the depressed, and courage to the anxious.

In every one of my books, there is a creator God. I can’t write about hope without writing God in there. I can’t see a purpose in our lives without a divine hand and a cosmic plan. I can’t have an ordinary character defeat all odds by their own strength of will. Life doesn’t work that way. I believe in being an honest writer. In being honest about myself and humanity, I see that we are very flawed, weak, and selfish. We need help.

Even so, I also don’t see God swooping in and making everything perfect. Hardly. What I see in life is that the struggle is part of the plan. The trial makes the hero stronger. The power to overcome happens when we let go of ourselves and become what we were created to be from the beginning. In short, we have to be reconciled to God before we stop digging ourselves into a deeper hole or get trapped by the hole another dug for us. Hope only comes when we seek help from another source than ourselves, a big source than our problems, and divine source.

So, even though I write to give hope and not for the glory of God, my hope’s name is Jesus Christ. He may be hidden in the pages of my books, but he is there sure enough.

Why do I write?

I write because this is what I was created to do from the very beginning. I was created for a purpose. I was created to give hope. Therefore, I write so that you might smile, feel a little better, and believe that perhaps you too can be the hero of your own fairy tale.

Check out my young adult fantasy fiction novels HERE for something optimistic and fun.

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