Why do writers write?

Career Inspired

Many of today’s celebrated authors started out in jobs completely unconnected to writing and used their life experiences to fuel their stories.

The 20-million-copy best seller, Atomic Habits, written by James Clear, was created after years of blogging. The author was a US college baseball player studying biomechanics when an injury forced him to look at how small habits could lead to life-changing outcomes. He blogged about self-improvement and productivity and received such high praise for explaining the science behind his strategies that his first book reached the top of the New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller lists.

Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, worked in film production. She drew upon her love of old Hollywood glamour to inspire her creativity and, after a slow start, continued to draw upon her experiences in the entertainment industry. She now has a string of novels to her name, many of which have been adapted for film and TV.

Dan Brown, well-known author of The Da Vinci Code, started out as a singer-songwriter. He released two albums, which never took off, and became an English teacher instead. One day, his school received a visit from the US Secret Service, and this sparked his interest in intelligence agencies and secret societies, which later turned him into a global phenomenon.

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was a fusion between the author’s experiences as a riverboat pilot and then a printer's apprentice. He began by writing humorous travel letters from his experiences on the river, then created the iconic characters of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, who have since become icons of American literature.

Personal Hardship

For some authors, writing became a way to process trauma and find meaning in their suffering.

Charles Dickens had an uncomfortable childhood when his father was imprisoned for debt. At 12 years old, he was forced to work at a boot-blacking factory where he saw much poverty and injustice. He taught himself shorthand to become a parliamentary reporter, and this helped to get him noticed. He took the opportunity to place social injustice at the heart of his novels, and because he was such a popular author, he could use his position to speak up for the working classes who were unable to speak up for themselves.

Matt Haig of The Midnight Library fame experienced a severe depression episode in his twenties and has since shared that writing became a way to process his mental health struggles and find meaning in his life.

Similarly, best-selling author Marian Keyes struggled with severe depression, as well as alcohol addiction. She found writing was a therapeutic outlet during her recovery and has been a big part of her healing.

A cancer diagnosis drove Amanda Prowse to become a full-time writer.  She was a management consultant before she became ill and had always written short stories in notebooks that had never been published. She is married to a soldier, and in 2011, she self-published her debut novel, Poppy Day, in collaboration with the Royal British Legion. She now has over thirty novels to her name.

The "Accidental" Bestseller

Not every author sets out with a grand plan to be famous, and some successful stories were never intended to be novels at all.

Colleen Hoover was a social worker when she self-published her first novel, Slammed. She had written it for fun and never intended it for release, but uploaded it to Amazon because her mother had just bought a new Kindle, and it was the way in which she could read it. It gained momentum through BookTok, and when her second novel was released four years later, it became a viral success.

Maeve Binchy’s writing career was also launched unexpectedly. She spent time on a kibbutz in Israel and wrote humorous letters home to her father. He sent them off to the Irish Times to be published, which led to the newspaper commissioning her as a columnist and features writer. In turn, these daily observations became characters in her books.

Ali Hazelwood worked as a professor in America and holds a Ph.D in Neuroscience. Her debut blockbuster, The Love Hypothesis, began as Star Wars fan fiction on a website, where it was discovered by a literary agent who helped her adapt it into a bestselling novel. She now has a new career as an author.

 The Long Haul

The dream of overnight success inspires many of us to write, but it rarely proves to be true. More often than not, being recognised follows years of persistent effort and a string of modestly successful works.

The world-renowned spy thriller Eye of the Needle, written by Ken Follett, was his eleventh novel. He became a writer through journalism and publishing, and although his ten earlier works achieved some moderate success, it was not until the eleventh that he became a household name.

J.K. Rowling’s first work,  Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was rejected by 12 publishers before finally being accepted by Bloomsbury because the CEO’s daughter enjoyed the first chapter.

Stephen King‘s first novel, Carrie, was rejected 30 times. He threw the manuscript in the bin before his wife rescued it and encouraged him to try again. Carrie is now an international bestseller of over 350 million copies.

And Kathryn Stockett, who wrote The Help, was turned down by 60 agents.  She kept submitting her manuscript for three and a half years before one agent finally said yes. Fortunately for readers, its modern classic status has now been recognised, and it has sold over 10 million copies and been adapted into an Oscar-winning film.

How about you?

As these stories show, there is no single or correct path to becoming a famous writer. It is often the unexpected or unwanted struggles that create the material to tell a story, and it never happens without persistence and hard work.

I’d love to know what inspires you to write and learn about the stories only you can tell. Do drop a comment below!