Never mistake motion for Action.

Once I led a big volunteer group. Things went so very well I was interviewed for a piece in a national publication. The question came up, “What’s it take to make a movement?” I made a grunting sound.

At that time, I did not even note the crass joke, but the writer did, and she opened her article with my answer. To her the grunting was a double entendre, seeing my answer was grunting as in having a challenging bowel movement.

I quite literally meant that championing a movement took enormous effort (that kind of grunting).

I would now say that making a movement requires motive. (That’s a little bit redundant when you look at the common etymology of these words. It’s bordering on a logical fallacy of an appeal to definition.) I’m thinking here, however, of motive as in the Reason or Purpose one might have for investing in/igniting a movement. In other words, to lead a movement, one must have a big answer to the little question of “why?”

So, why do I write? that’s the question of the day.

1. To be heard…I’m kind of a quiet person, and yet, I have a whole lot to say. Social media and writing help me find and express my voice. I am still learning how to step out and speak up.

2. To contribute/entertain…I want to write content that’s riveting. I want your coffee to grow cold. I want you to read my books multiple times, share at book clubs, and pass copies among your friends. I want there to be that kind of satisfaction earned from reading my novels.

3. To address tough issues…I learn about them as I write about them. Sometimes I highlight atrocities to come, like how we’re turning all of our good land into HFCS production and ethanol. Seems we’re not raising food so much any more.

4. To meet needs…mine, for all the reasons cited here, but hopefully needs others may have, too. Identify with a character. Get a boost from a happy ending. Find your north through struggles presented and overcome. (And of course, item 2 above, be entertained.)

5. To be expressive/inventive…It’s a real rush to mint a new turn of phrase. It’s electrifying to combine words and watch the sparks fly. I love to invent, to apply imagination to things, and since I’m no engineer, I apply all this to fictional things.

6. To affect the world….cue Clapton’s “If I could change the world,” and there you have it. Or Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror,” or several other songs that tune into this idea of making the world a bit better. I have tried in many ways, from teaching to parenting to running a volunteer program, and I hope that writing, too, has lasting impact.

7. To create…it feels better than fixing things, even, and I thought that was my strongest driver. Really though, creating is potent. It feels good. Whether I’m building a greenhouse or a pirate ship or a poem…or now making up worlds…it’s a good sensation.

8. To leave a legacy…I think my greatest wish would be that what I do here in writing might make my kids proud (or at least help bring us together). Writing is archeology. It allows the here and now me to be represented to the future reader. How else will people 100 years from now even know I was here? How will my grandkids (if ever I were to have them) know what the old man was made of?(It would be nice, too, though not probable, for the legacy to be fiscal, so my grands might not have to sweat the small stuff.)

9. For the exercise. It’s a lot to keep all these things in order, to invent worlds and abide by the rules established in them. I guess I find that all this “keeps me sharp.”

10. To honor my father. This one is deeply personal and honestly added on in an edit of this blog when I felt especially transparent. That man read a novel a day. He was a voracious reader and an earnest learner and he loved to process his world through the lens of the worlds he absorbed in science fiction. He never got to read a novel I wrote, but I think of him every time I’m at the keyboard.