October 20 is NCTE’s National Day on Writing. This year, we asked you to tell us why you write—and you did. Twitter recorded more than 60,000 tweets with the hashtag #WhyIWrite, and Twitter wasn’t the only place where people shared why they love this art form. We posed the question to select NCTE members, and these were among the responses:
I write because one day it will be the only proof that I existed.
—Shekema H. Silveri
I’ve been writing since I was a kid—because it was fun and because I just HAD to. I don’t mean that anyone told me I had to—I was itchy with poems and stories I needed to put down with pen on paper. Now I’m an adult and I still feel that way (and, believe it or not, I’m still mostly using pen and paper)!
—Marilyn Singer
I write to make meaning and leaps into the known and unknown. I tell my students they’re sentence-makers on a mission with hope and for change.
—R. Joseph Rodríguez
I write to organize my work life, to share information with others, to make sense of my experiences, to compensate for my aging memory, to immortalize a moment of wonder, to work through sorrow or pain, to connect with a friend, to share my love.
—Debi Goodman
I write to articulate my thinking about how children learn. I always discover new things when I write about the classroom.
—Franki Sibberson
I write because I get tired of staring in silence when inequities loom loudly and compound, giving massive voice to age-old and newborn injustices. Writing evokes more than any other thing a too often fought-for reality that I must struggle to preserve: that I too am human.
—David E. Kirkland
I write because I want to tell funny stories that make people laugh. I also write because I love drawing the pictures that go with the words.
—Cece Bell
And from a podcast on the subject, a 6th grade student offers, “I write because if I didn’t, it would be like a sunrise with no sun.”
Comment below to tell us why you write.