The Oakland Review Blog

Introducing a new literary blog from the editorial staff of The Oakland Review, specializing in book/poetry reviews, personal essays, and cultural commentary.

October 3, 2024

Why We Write

By Kathryn Villareal Bell

Writers are constantly bombarded with questions about how they do their job. Is there a certain headspace you need to be in to write? How do you manage the editing process? Are you a stream of conscious writer or do you deliberate on each and every word before putting it on the page? Which came first, the writing or the world you wrote about? For such a complicated, tiring, and unique process, it is remarkable that every writer is asked the same questions. 

But why? For starters, most jobs have a simple timeline of beginning to end. Architects begin with a blueprint, then source materials, then build, and, finally, sell. Surgeons diagnose, cut, remove organs, replace organs, sew up, and release. But writers don’t work this way. A writer lives in the in-between, in the idea, in the process. Their contemplative process forces them to deliberate, write, edit, rewrite, plateau into a mental breakdown about how the piece will never say what they need it to say, spot a bug crawling around the floor that inspires a breakthrough, finish the piece, rinse and repeat. But even once the piece is “finished,” writers may find it in their bottom drawer five years later and decide on a different take. It’s agitating and emotionally draining and means that your mind never really stops writing. It’s exhausting; so why do we do this?

I began writing at ten years old, before I had any sense of identity.  I didn’t think of my future with writing, I didn’t think I was becoming a writer, I didn’t even realize what tiring and rigorous and rewarding of a field I was going to, one day, want to come into.

I grew up in extremely struggling quarters. My father tried to provide for a family of seven with less than equitable means. My mother was a stay-at-home mom who pulled shifts at the daycare me and my brothers went through. I never knew we were poor. I’ve lived in hotel rooms, and in family’s houses, and most days when I left school, I didn’t know if I would be returning to a house. I knew the word eviction before I knew the word college. But there wasn’t time to complain and more importantly, there wasn’t anyone to hear. My parents had to spend their time making sure we slept in a bed, and I was thankful for everything they did to make that happen. And I still am. But no matter how soft my mattress was, all I could think about was the one I lost in our last eviction. I struggled to talk about my emotions, my sadness, my fear. I was lonely. And I began writing to cope with it. I literally learned how to write before I learned how to talk about myself. But it saved me.

When you grow up not knowing if there will be a kitchen to eat breakfast in, you need something constant. My constant was my journal. Every night,—no matter where I was sleeping, who was in my house, how bad or scared I was feeling—I wrote. My written feelings morphed into prayers, then into poem. A year after my parents’ divorce, I decided I would become a writer. It changed everything: school became the most important thing to me, I got good grades, and suddenly everyone was expecting me to get a scholarship to a good school and save us from this world. In the barrio, I was called “The one who made it out.” My life was no longer only about my dreams; it was about everyone’s dreams put upon my pen. One day, the pain and pressure of this became too much. It was a lonely world. But I couldn’t complain. My writing, my success was a gift, it was hope— until it became overwhelming. I began to perform my poetry at the Dallas Poetry Slam, poems of how I felt I was falling into someone else’ version of my future. Rhymes of wondering if I was good enough. The snaps and cheers and hosts telling me that they want to hear more from me, that they can tell the care behind my words, a whole community calling me a writer: it showed me I wasn’t alone in my dream. The poems later became a portfolio that I sent to the Creative Writing Department at Carnegie Mellon University. Which followed with an acceptance, a scholarship, and an answer to my family’s dream. And validation that all the pain, anger, loneliness, and fear from how I grew up was answered before I knew what it meant to be a writer.

I’m not sure what my future as a writer will be, but what I know is that I’m not just surviving. Writing is not a life vest, not a dream, not an identity, it’s not just all I know: it’s my choice, my life, my passion.

During the last conversation I had with my dad before he passed, I talked to him about being and becoming a writer and he didn’t really understand it. But he told me, “Make sure you living with a love of writing, not writing to live.” I think I’m finally understanding that.