What makes somebody write?

Let’s face it. It’s about one of the loneliest journeys in the world. If you play a piano, you have the sound to accompany you. Other people can join you while you play, and you are not alone. You can paint in a room. Other people can join you while you lay color onto a canvas, or ink onto a page and, you are not alone.

But, if you write, you are entirely on your own. Nobody can talk to you. You are silent and in another world, which entirely exists within you.

So you have to ask. What sort of nutcase would voluntarily stay locked up there inside their brains? What motivates them?

To a certain extent, and I can only speak for myself, but knowing to the other extent, that it will be people similar, very similar, to myself:

My first motivation is an involuntary one. I find myself fascinated when sitting on a bus. There’s the woman over there on my left side. Dream away, Zara. She’s got perfectly coiffed hair. Dream away, Zara. Her long red fingernails would be great gollywog scoopers inside her nose – especially while waiting at streetlights behind the steering wheel, where we are told this exercise is widely practiced – and she has a big diamond ring on her right hand. Dream away, Zara. Not her left hand. So;

By the time I’m off that bus, to me she’s turned into a sad divorcee, on her lonely journey into Harrods, or Saks Fifth Avenue, to find something stunning for her next attempt to find a mate. She’s lost her husband to a younger model, and is battling old age, like it’s a grand final game at the national level of some sort of league…

You see? My head is constantly on overdrive. If I didn’t write my brain would explode. That’s just the first load of motivation.

The second load of motivation is an inbuilt drive to accomplish what I’ve started. I’ve done it all my life. I hate accumulating loads of unfinished projects. I have to be very careful about choosing books to read, because I start – I finish. And there is only one book I couldn’t finish. That was a book, set in Warsaw and was written by a Rabbi documenting the Ghetto during the war. I just couldn’t finish it. So, I have to reach my goal - AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER – THE END.

The third motivation is a genuine love of the written word. Of all the animals in the world, we humans have the gift of reading and writing. It is a duty to pass the joy of it onto our children and today we are very lucky to be able to do so, and so adequately with a lot of very great and talented authors and illustrators. We have access to excellent secondary education, government grants, and cheaper book publishing/distribution outlets as well as the internet.

The fourth motivation is my dramatic soul needs feeding. I’m a drama queen. I’m a Pauline being tied on the railway track just before the train comes steaming down the track at full steam. I’m Pauline tied onto the rollers of the local sawmill. I’m Charlie Chaplin crying because I’m happy. I’m often annoying my husband or my daughter by overreacting if I can’t find parking, shut a cupboard, can't find something. I’m – well you get the message. If I can’t act it (because I’m too shy), I can write it. And these characters up there (I toss my head) are banging on my brain to be released, I can assure you.

The fifth motivation is a need to prove to myself that I can leave my mark on the world before I pass this mortal coil. That my tombstone could read:

SHE DID TRY

I’d hate to whisper my last breath with “I wish.”