Writers answer the question, ‘Why do I write?‘

Cyril Wong

I think if I knew exactly why I write, I would suddenly stop. I can’t explain it. Within me is a drive, a source of tremendous energy that stems from childhood trauma, a reluctance to accept the status quo, an unwillingness to accept that life can be this ugly etc. In a way, writing is living as a kind of war. And I live this way because, well, I cannot imagine the alternative.

Let me put it another way: I don’t know what it’s like to belong; to live as an object of social organisation; to be a zombie. I watched my parents and friends become zombies. I didn’t want to live by dying, a little everyday, until all that was left of me was a nodding, unholy, corpse-like thing. So reading, thinking and expressing myself authentically allowed me to enter a real and wakeful existence.

Perhaps my fundamental reason for writing is desire—desire to achieve wholeness or accept brokenness. But still I think it’s more than that. It’s something far more intangible. If I only knew, the drive would vanish. I don’t know why I know this to be true. It just is. I just can’t explain it.

A recipient of the National Arts Council’s Young Artist Award and the Singapore Literature Prize, Cyril Wong is the author of nine books of poetry and one collection of strange tales. He lives in Singapore. Find him at www.cyrilwong.org or www.softblow.org

Bani Haykal

up, snugged against nothingness, so what then (or where else) was left to traverse? And, as in, what I meant was that, sorry, I assumed we were beginning from the same marker. I reset.

Everything is a puzzle. In that wonderment, everything was guttural against an aural blur. In this abstract mess, I heard logic screaming out from an unmistaken kiss. From there on then, phrases unlocked sentences.

In the beginning, it was all about configurations. Geography, riddled by games. All I could think about was placing obstacles, passwords, encrypting the future and if I weren’t sleeping, it’s Wally who’s hiding.

The answer has not been written, yet.

I despise the speech. Either or, my proclivity towards the freedom of thought propelled me to express without hope. To create without care. A thought before I imagine the purpose of sharing a ventricle to the world. In this space, even death is a work of fiction.

The first sentence. It sets the stage but does nothing to baffle me. To be amused, I think my character needs to sleep. The familiarity of this, this, what have you, sends me thinking about a premeditated space I once dreamt of. Immediately, I wake up

bani haykal writes music + narratives. He has published one book of poetry, Sit Quietly In The Flood, and has read / presented works at several festivals including The Kuala Lumpur International Literary Festival and Singapore Arts Festival. His work with music includes being the vocalist and principle songwriter for alternative rock band, b-quartet, writer to performance / music collective, mux and a relatively new, unnamed, audio-visual collective. Presently, he is researching on music and culture and is an Associate Artist with The Substation. www.misinterpret.tk

Damyanti Ghosh

Over the past three years, I’ve often wondered why I write.
I have earned less than 200 USD from fiction, so it isn’t money. Only a few people have read my stories, so it is not validation.

Fiction began when magazine editors complained that too many vignettes crept into my writing, which would be better used in stories. So I picked up creative writing, as an exorcism of sorts.

As the stories came, writing became an addiction, because of these new people and places in my head, an escape from everyday life.

Some days I write because the escape is easy, I can’t stop writing. It is a high. But it is on days when the stories do not come, when my writing plods, when I miss the magic, that I truly realize why I write.

When the writing flows through me, it is like meditation. The ‘I’ disappears. There is only the world created, and the words used to create it– words that come from a place I cannot reach at will.

I write so I can slip into that place, which is above and beyond me. Where, unlike our world, things make sense and are built to last.

Damyanti Ghosh is an established freelance writer for various magazines and journals. Her short fiction has been published in the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Muse India and in various print anthologies by Marshall Cavendish, Monsoon Books, and MPH publications. You can find her at www.amloki.com.