Why Do You Write? Finding Purpose Beneath the Pressure

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Inside Creative Writing

Why do you write? It’s a deceptively simple question that can unravel or resurrect your creative life. In this deeply personal episode, Brad Reed invites listeners into an honest exploration of the emotional and practical reasons that drive us to tell stories. From past failures turning passion into obligation to reclaiming joy in the writing process, this episode offers a powerful reframing of the writer’s journey.

Brad reflects on how writing can lose its spark when overshadowed by dreams of publishing and visibility, and how the truest stories are often the ones we write for no one but ourselves. He introduces the idea of “craft-based writing,” a mindset that prioritizes voice, honesty, and emotional resonance over formula and trends.

Key takeaways include:

• Why passion-driven writing is more sustainable than outcome-focused writing
• How market obsession can kill your creativity
• The three core elements that suffer when publishing becomes your focus
• The difference between writing as art and writing as content
• A practical writing challenge that rekindles your love of the process

This episode is a must-listen for any writer feeling stuck, burned out, or unsure why they’re writing at all. If you’re ready to rediscover the joy of storytelling and reconnect with your purpose, this episode will guide you back to your center.

Formatted and Edited Transcript

Today, we’re exploring a question that a lot of writers don’t give enough thought to: Why do I write? Knowing the answer can change everything about your writing. Let’s dive in.

OK, so why do you write? I want you to actually attempt to answer that question right now. You can even pause the podcast for a few minutes if you need to and give it some thought. Why do you write?

All right, so hopefully you paused and took some time to think about that. You may have come up with some answers, like many other writers do: answers like to make some money and build a writing career, or maybe to process trauma, to feel power in a world where I don’t often feel powerful. Maybe to get followers and subscribers on social media. Maybe to just connect with somebody, even if that’s only imaginatively through your story.

A lot of writers say things like, Because I have to write. There’s something inside me that just drives me to write. I have to write. “To create beauty” is another reason writers often give. Maybe it’s to impress others or gain recognition; sometimes that’s a reason a little bit under the surface that we don’t really pay that much attention to, but it’s there. Maybe it’s to leave something behind in this world, to make your mark by leaving your writing, your thoughts behind. Maybe it’s to make sense of the chaos of this world, and there’s plenty of that to go around right now.

Maybe it’s to say what you couldn’t feel like you could say out loud. You can say it through writing. Maybe it’s just to prove to yourself that you could do it: I could write a book. Maybe your answer is, I don’t know. For a lot of writers, that actually is their answer: I’ve never really thought about it. I’m not sure I know why I write. Or maybe it’s a mix of a whole bunch of different things all mashed together that drives you to the keyboard or the pen.

So if you’re feeling bold, I would love for you to share your reason in the comments below. I’d love to see what your thoughts are there, what you came up with. That’s what we’re going to explore today: this big, overarching question: Why do I write? And we’re going to find out why the answer to that is so powerful in our writing lives.

The Passion Trap: A Personal Story

I want to start with a little bit of a personal story about my previous life. I’ve done a whole bunch of different jobs in my life. As you may know, I’m a high school English teacher now, and a creative writing teacher, but it’s not what I always did. I went back to college in my 40s to do that. And before doing that, I had a whole bunch of different jobs and businesses that I tried.

So I’m going to take you all the way back to high school for this first little story. I was in love with music. I was learning to play the guitar, the piano, a little bit of drums.. I just loved making music, writing music, and especially performing it with other people. I started a little band in high school that was absolutely terrible. I started some other bands after high school that were actually pretty good, and we had a lot of fun. It brought me so much joy. I had so much passion for writing and making music, especially with other people. I loved it, and I was convinced: This is my life’s calling. This is what I want to do.

I was living in a small town at the time. I couldn’t exactly pick up and go to LA or New York, but I knew that I loved to record music as well. So I thought, I’m going to start a little recording studio here in my town. I invested a bunch of money in it. We rented a location for it. I ended up spending money remodeling it into a studio, put the site up, and started doing this as a business.

Boy, did I record some terrible music. Terrible artists. But they were willing to pay me. And what I noticed was that very quickly, my passion was gone. It was still fun sometimes to do it—I loved doing it—but that drive, that passion I had for it, started to go away pretty quickly. Suddenly I wasn’t doing it for me. I was doing it for this artist, whose music I was only recording because they had money to pay me. I needed money. I had invested all this in the equipment.

Pretty quick, it started to just feel like a job.

From Websites to Writing: Losing Joy for the Sake of Money

That happened to me again. It’s happened a bunch of times in my life. The other one I want to talk about is not too long after high school. I was pretty young, right at the dawn of the internet, right when businesses were realizing, Oh, we probably should have some kind of website out there.

So I started playing around with website design and found it was really fun. It was almost like a new form of art that I could put out there for the whole world to see. Back then, putting something on the internet was a big deal. Businesses used to advertise that they had a website.

I loved that building of something new and being on the cutting edge. So of course, I took that love and enjoyment of just creating that content, and I started hiring it out. I started doing websites for anybody, any business that wanted one and could afford it. Started meeting with them, building out these websites, and pretty quickly I was not having fun anymore.

Because again, I wasn’t doing it for me. I was doing it for them. I was doing it for the paycheck that came at the end of the project. That company didn’t last very long either, because I didn’t want to spend my life building websites for any random business that walked in.

When Writing Becomes a Chore

A large part of what we’re going to talk about today is how turning passion into a job can rob us of the passion and joy we once felt. In both of those examples, music and web design, it started with joy and passion. But I turned it into an obligation, something beyond what I was interested in or enjoying.

Now, as I’ve been thinking back about my own writing journey, and even about this podcast, I can see that I’ve fallen into this trap many times. That same element is in play with writing right now, and I’ve been doing a lot of introspection on this.

Writing right now feels close to that same edge where the love and passion I have for it is starting to dissipate, because my perspective is in the wrong place. My answer to the question “Why am I writing?” is off. It’s become more about the end result and how I can get it out into the world than about the process of writing. And this podcast has felt the same way at times, too focused on listener stats, too focused on things like SEO, site ranking, and iTunes charts.

It’s really easy to fall into that as the focus. In fact, as I was thinking about this, I realized that in the past, when I’ve paused the podcast for extended periods, it was often because I had lost the joy. I had gotten my perspective off, and the passion left. And those were the times when I thought, Why do I do this? Why do I do this podcast?

I don’t know if that’s ever come through in the podcast, but I’m still really proud of the work we’ve done here at Inside Creative Writing. I’m excited about where we’re headed with it. But I can admit that at times, it has felt disconnected from what I really want to be teaching and talking about. Not that the content isn’t valuable or interesting, but sometimes my perspective has gotten out of whack.

A Change of Scene and Perspective

So I’m doing something different today. I don’t know if you can tell. I have a directional microphone that’s supposed to weed out all the background noise, but if I had an omnidirectional mic, you’d probably hear seagulls. You might hear surfers walking by or car doors opening and closing, because I’m literally sitting here looking out at the ocean.

I’ve been doing a little introspective writing this morning. I have a journal next to me. I’ve been thinking through these thoughts, trying to get my perspective right. I really felt like I needed to shake things up. I didn’t want to just sit in my home studio trying to be professional. I wanted to get to the heart of what I’m doing.

The question I’ve been exploring is this: Why am I writing? Why am I podcasting? If I’m not doing it for a class, or a deadline, or an audience, why am I doing it?

What I’m realizing, and this won’t be news to anybody, is that modern writing culture, especially online culture, focuses on publishing, sales, and visibility above all else. It’s all about building a platform. It’s all about how do I get published? Or if you want to self-publish, it’s how do I market this book and get people to buy it?

Maybe it’s about market research, figuring out what kind of books are selling right now, or what agents are looking for. A lot of it’s about jumping on trends. What’s popular right now? How can we write something that fits the trend?

The Problem with Outcome-Driven Writing

What I’m finding (and I’ve been victim to this too, which is why I’m doing all this introspection) is that when we make that the perspective, writing becomes about the outcomes. Even subconsciously, as we’re writing, we’re thinking about followers, fans, publishing deals, monetization. We’re thinking about how this content can “go somewhere.”

So writing becomes about the end goal, not the process. We turn writing into a job, just like I did with music, just like I did with web design. And at least with music and web design, I was making some decent money. Turning writing into a job, though, is, for the vast majority of us, a job that brings in $0.

Maybe you’ve figured out how to make a few bucks here and there, but for most people who write, we’re not making money. And yet, even with that, we’re not primarily writing for ourselves. We’re doing it for some future reward, some goal that, when you really think about it, is almost entirely out of our control.

How many times have we heard the stories of amazing writers, famous, well-respected writers, getting rejection after rejection after rejection? It almost feels like hitting the lottery when a book gets published. And in a lot of ways, it is. It’s about timing. It’s about finding the right agent looking for exactly what you’ve written, and it being ready enough to roll with.

When Pressure Crushes Creativity

That perspective causes a ton of pressure which is the last thing we need when trying to be creative. That pressure leads to abandoning drafts because they aren’t marketable. You’re halfway through a rough draft, but you think, There’s just not a market for this right now. Or, Who would want to read this? Even though you’re into it, you second guess whether an agent would even want it. So you quit.

It causes us to hold back on what we write, on what we say in our books, because we’re afraid of offending people. We’re picturing readers, family, agents. So we censor ourselves. We cut things. We avoid exploring interesting directions because it doesn’t fit the mold. It’s actually a major cause of writer’s block as well.

One of the worst effects of that pressure is the way it fuels inner self-talk. We chide ourselves if we miss a day, or a week, or God forbid, a month of writing. We start sounding like a terrible boss who knows exactly how to make us feel terrible. You’re not a real writer. What you’re writing is garbage.

That pressure makes us compare ourselves to other writers who are succeeding. Every time someone publishes a book, there’s that gut reaction: Should’ve been me.

But if we’re focused on the process, not the result, then it doesn’t really matter. So someone else got published. That’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to write the best story I can write. I’m trying to write something that’s true to me.

That’s where the freedom is, when we realize the process matters more than the outcome.

Taking Back the Joy

That pressure makes us write out of fear, often convincing us that we’re wasting our time. That we’re not good enough to write what we’re working on. That our platform isn’t big enough, or that we don’t have enough followers on Twitter (I’m not calling it the other thing), or TikTok, or BlueSky so we’ll never get a publishing deal. So we start trying to write things that will energize a specific audience or attract followers.

And in doing so, we hand over our joy and creativity to something completely outside of our control. The online writing world is largely built on that view, that the ultimate goal should be publication and book sales.

Just look at the most popular writing resources online. They’re obsessed with that. The pitch is always: Come to us, take our course, and we’ll get you published. We’ll get you on the bestseller list.

The Creative Irony

Here’s the kicker, and this is really where I want to go today. I’m not saying publishing, sales, or visibility aren’t important. We create art because we want to share it with people. That’s part of it.

But here’s the problem: If you write with publishing, sales, and fame as your main goal, that almost never leads to writing that actually gets published or sells a bunch of copies or makes you famous. Because you end up writing stuff that isn’t true to who you are.

Now, do formulaic, unoriginal books get published? Do they make some money? Sure. But is that what you want from your writing? Is that how you’d answer the question Why do I write?

If your answer is, To write formulaic, unoriginal books that make money, there are easier ways to make a buck. Turning your art into a business and sucking the joy out of it? That’s not what most of us want.

I doubt that’s the reason you came up with when I asked that question at the start of this podcast. I bet your reason wasn’t: To turn my passion and joy into a business so I could make a buck and lose that joy along the way.

Now, if it is, if you’re like, No, seriously, I just want to write whatever will make me money, this probably isn’t the podcast for you. You’ll want one that’s laser-focused on publishing and platform building. That’s not us.

Writing the Book I Wanted

I’ve started countless novels over the years dreaming of commercial success, publishing contracts, imagining myself on a book tour, but I could never seem to finish them. I always ran out of gas. And even when I did finish them, I didn’t like them. I had written books that I didn’t even want to read.

It wasn’t until I decided to write the book I wanted to write, regardless of marketability, that everything changed. The book I released in the last couple of years, I knew it had very limited market potential.

It’s about a woman who loses her religious faith after a major natural disaster. Think about those two red flags: To write a book about losing faith, I had to start with a woman who was deeply religious. That turned off a lot of readers, and agents, who read the first chapter and assumed it was a Christian book. It’s not.

Then, it’s also about a major natural disaster. In today’s world, do we really need more disaster stories? Publishers didn’t think so. One even said, This isn’t the right time to be releasing a disaster novel. People want escapism, not more reminders of what could go wrong.

So how do you market a book like that?

I knew the challenges. But my passion for it, despite all the reasons not to write it, powered me through years of writing and revision. And it’s now the single piece of writing I’m most proud of. By miles. Because I loved that story. It came from my gut. I wanted to tell it, no matter how many copies it sold.

Real Success Isn’t Measured in Sales

I’ve made a few hundred dollars from it, to be totally transparent. If I calculated the hourly rate, it’s probably $0.001 an hour. But if I could go back in time and do it again, knowing that, I would 100% do it again.

That story came from who I am. And now that it exists, it will always exist for whoever wants to read it. You can’t put a price on that.

Maybe someday it ends up in the hands of a movie producer or Oprah finds it in a used bookstore. That’s not going to happen. But if it did? Amazing.

Regardless, I have this story I’m proud of. One that I would read, had I not written it.

Isn’t that what we’re writing for? That feeling of I’m proud of this. I created something that never existed before.

That’s success.

When Passion Leads to Resonance

I’m not saying that projects we’re passionate about can’t lead to commercial success. They absolutely can. In fact, it’s when we tap into our honesty and our passion that we have the best chance of writing stories that resonate with readers, and with agents and publishers. They’re still people, (until AI takes over everything, anyway!).

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

One of the writers who’s inspired me the most is Cheryl Strayed. If you don’t know her, she’s the author of Wild, which was later turned into a movie. She’s written several other books, but the piece that had the most impact on me as a writer wasn’t Wild.

It was an essay she wrote called The Love of My Life, published in The Sun magazine in 2002.

The Essay That Changed Everything for Me

I’m not going to read Cheryl Strayed’s essay here—it’s a bit long, and it’s her work—but I want to tell you about it.

That essay blew me away. I had never read anything so raw and so honest. It felt like, well, I was going to say a confessional, but that’s not quite right. It’s a deeply personal piece about going through profound grief and how it completely derailed her life.

She reveals things in that essay that most people would never tell a soul, some of the most shameful things she’s done. And she doesn’t do it to shock the reader. She does it to be honest. To say, This is what grief can feel like.

It’s gripping, powerful, and real. I didn’t know writing like that existed. I didn’t know people did that.

When you first read it, and I imagine when she first wrote it, it wasn’t with the mindset of, Someone’s going to snap this up and pay me for it. That wasn’t the point.

You don’t walk away saying, Wow, she’s such a talented writer, even though she absolutely is. Instead, you walk away completely absorbed in her story, stunned by her vulnerability.

The Power of Honest Storytelling

Writing like that, writing that comes from necessity, from an inner need to tell the story, is what creates emotional impact. It’s about honesty, not polish. It’s about truth, not marketability.

I was exposed to that essay in my very first creative writing class when I went back to college in my 40s. I was studying to be a teacher and took a creative writing class on the side because it sounded fun. That essay might have been the very first thing we were assigned to read, and it changed my world.

I sat there reading it, thinking, Oh my gosh. I didn’t know writing could be like this. I wanted to know how she did it. How did she make it so powerful, so engaging?

Now, you might read it and think, Yeah, that was fine. Maybe it just hit me at the exact right time in my own emotional journey. But I can’t overstate how deeply it affected me.

Her piece is nonfiction; it’s her real life. But I’m not saying every book has to be about your deepest, darkest secrets. You don’t have to reveal things you’d never tell anyone.

Honesty in All Genres

What I am saying is that even when you’re writing genre fiction (sci-fi, horror, completely made-up people in completely made-up worlds), you’re still striving for honesty, craft, and voice. You’re still telling stories that come from your guts. You’re still exploring difficult things.

Because that’s what connects with people, whether it’s in genre fiction or literary fiction.

And here’s the thing: those three elements—honesty, craft, and voice—are the first things we sacrifice when we start putting publication first.

Our honesty starts to disappear because we don’t want to offend anyone. We hold back. We play it safe.

Our craft starts to suffer because we stop pushing boundaries. We’re no longer experimenting or exploring; we’re just trying to follow a model.

And our voice? Our voice starts to fade. The one thing that’s truly unique to us, whether we’ve found it yet or not, it starts slipping away.

If you talk to any writer of truly great fiction, literary or genre, you’ll find that their stories come from deep in their guts. Not from a study of what agents want right now. Not from trend analysis. But from truth.

A New Lens: Craft-Based Writing

So in this podcast, I’m going to start calling this perspective “craft-based writing.”

Now, I’m not launching a system or selling a book on it; it’s just a way for me to frame things in my own head. To remind myself what this is about.

When I sit down to write or plan a podcast, I want to remind myself: This is about craft-based writing. It’s about learning to write what matters to us. To write without apology. To write without fear.

But it’s also about writing with care, with skill, with technique, because our stories deserve that. They’re worth telling well.

So this podcast is still going to focus on technique and process. But we’re going to let go of the outcome.

Writing as a Walk, Not a Race

I always think in metaphors. So here’s one: I want you to imagine writing as a walk along the ocean shore. You’re stopping along the way to pick up rocks, to explore tide pools. Even if you’re a planner and you have your story mapped out, there’s still something magical about shifting your perspective, about finding joy in the process.

It’s like exploring the beach. You’re finding tiny, beautiful little things to bring into your story.

But when we’re focused mostly on the end goal, it feels more like a race. A sprint. You look down the beach and say, That outcropping right there is where I want to be. So you put your head down and just chug along through the thick sand.

And along the way? You miss the interesting rocks. You miss the crabs. You miss the octopus in the tide pool, which I actually found once, by the way, walking along the beach.

The Process Is the Art

The process is about privacy. It’s just you, generating the story. That’s when the art is happening, before it ever becomes public. Before you even think about Does anyone care about this story?

If we’re writing from our guts, our emotions, our memories, those stories will resonate. None of it is wasted time.

Unless, of course, it doesn’t come from you.

That’s one of my biggest hangups. When I’m writing, and I’m deep in a project, I’ll get that voice in my head that says: You’re wasting your time on this story. Why are you even writing this?

Behind that voice is the perspective that writing only matters if it gets published. That it’s only worth something if a ton of people read it. Or if it makes money.

But that’s a lie.

Art (creating art and writing is art) is about the process. That is the art. That’s where the joy and the passion live.

Now, if it becomes something more, if it finds commercial success? That’s awesome. And let’s be real: many writers have written many, many books before they had one that really connected.

So none of it is wasted. All of it is practice. All of it is making us better.

A Slight Shift in the Podcast

You may feel a slight shift in this podcast going forward. It’s not going to be a dramatic change. I’ve been looking back through the older episodes as I re-upload and reformat them for the 2020s, and I’m really proud of what’s already there. I think it aligns well with this perspective.

But going forward, we’re not going to be talking about getting published. We’re not going to talk about building platforms. We never really have. But now I want to intentionally focus more on the process of writing.

On discovering stories that are meaningful to us. And learning how to honor those stories by getting them on the page in the best way we can.

Because I believe this: if we do that, the end goal will take care of itself, if it was meant to.

Writing That Brings You Back to Yourself

“Writing that brings you back to yourself.” That’s the phrase that’s been rolling around in my head lately.

You know, every writer I’ve interviewed on this podcast, I’ve asked them the same question at the end of the interview:

If you could go back in time and talk to the version of yourself before you had any writing success, what would you say to them?

And as I’ve listened back to those interviews, none of them—not one—has ever said anything about getting published or building a platform. None of them said, I wish I had spent more time figuring out what agents wanted at the time.

What do they say instead?

They say things like:

• I wish I had taken more risks.
• I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time doubting myself.
• I wish I had trusted my instincts and written the stories I was passionate about.

That’s what matters to writers who’ve “made it.” That’s what they would go back and tell themselves.

Wise Words: You Are Your Best Thing

Today’s “Wise Words” segment is short but powerful. It comes from Toni Morrison’s Beloved:

“You are your best thing.”

Oh my gosh, I get chills just saying that simple little five-word sentence: You are your best thing. I’m going to print that out and stick it on my computer where I can see it every day when I sit down to write or podcast, or do anything else.

Because we’re full of second-guessing. Full of that internal voice that says, You’re not good enough. Someone else is way better than you. What are you even doing?

But here’s the truth: You are your best thing. And that’s absolutely true.

Nobody can write the stories that you will write. Even if you gave someone your idea, your entire plot, your characters, your outline, they would write a completely different book. Because it wouldn’t be from you.

There’s no way anyone else can write like you write. That’s the thing about writing. Thirty thousand, fifty thousand, eighty thousand words, your voice is the only one like it.

The Weekly Challenge

So here’s your writing challenge this week:

Write something that doesn’t go anywhere. And I don’t mean plot-wise. I mean something that doesn’t go anywhere outside yourself. Something no one else will read.

Write it only for you.

If you’re not sure where to start, consider writing about something shameful, something you’d never want anyone to know. Write it either autobiographically, telling your real story, or give it to a fictional character and have them walk through it.

It doesn’t have to be long. It could be a paragraph or two. Or maybe it takes off and you spend a lot of time with it.

But here’s the key: Write it with the intention that no one will ever see it. Even if it’s the best writing you’ve ever done, don’t show it to anyone.

Just let it exist for you.

Then, respect it enough to not turn it into content. Don’t fold it into a book. Don’t post it online. Let it remain a piece of writing that is purely yours.

And afterward, I’d love for you to share—not what you wrote—but how the experience felt. How did it feel to do that kind of writing?

You can share your thoughts in the comments below.

The Story Rescue Checklist

Before we go, I want to remind you about a free resource I’m really proud of; it’s called the Story Rescue Checklist.

This is for anyone writing a story, whether you’re on chapter one or finishing up, but feeling like something’s off. That nagging feeling that says, This isn’t working. It’s not what I wanted it to be.

The Story Rescue Checklist helps you look at your story from a bunch of different angles. It helps you figure out what’s not working and how to get things back on track.

You can grab it at:
insidecreativewriting.com/src
That’s SRC for “Story Rescue Checklist.”

Until Next Time…

Until next time, remember: the best way to improve as a writer is by writing. Getting those words on the page. I hope that’s what you’re up to at some point today.

That’s what I’m going to try to do, right after I post a little note on my computer that says: You are your best thing.

So go be your best thing.

And I can’t wait to see you on the next episode.

Explore our full How to Write a Novel guide here!

Talk to Us!

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