Do I Like to Write?

This is another installment in my "Why Do I Write" series. This post really questions if me liking is any part of it.

Do I Like to Write? This morning, I wasn't so sure I did. I hadn't really written anything meaningful in months, and I was questioning why I even bothered. I decided it was time to go over my various writing projects, and think about why I did them, and if I liked it. This was what I came up with.

My first serious writing project began when I was seven years old. I decided that I wanted to publish a "newspaper" for my family and friends. I went around collecting money from people, and then I went to my mom for help. She, understandably  was a little hesitant at first. She realized that she would be doing most of the work, but she still agreed. I am so grateful to her for that. For two years, I wrote articles about school, and field trips, and holidays, and books, and everything else I could think of. When I was done, I gave them all to her, and she typed them up, printed them out, and once a month, we sent out the Classical Academy News. When I was about ten, I took over the typing. I emailed the articles to her, and she formatted them and printed them out. By that time, CAN was a very different thing than when we started out.

Did I like it? Not always. I often had unmet deadlines, stuck printers, and unpaid subscriptions. So, why did I keep doing it for nearly four years? I did it for that feeling that came when I held the printed newsletter in my hands each month. It was only four pages long, and I only had fifteen subscribers, but for me, it was amazing. One time, I wrote a review of a field trip to a small, local book binding company we went on. The mom who organized the field trips was one of the subscribers, and she emailed me after she read it. She liked it so much that she wanted to know if she could send it to the book binding company to read! The feeling I got right then is why I write.

Maybe that is not really an answer to the question, "Do I like to write?" So, I'll answer it with another question, "Does it really matter if I like writing while I am doing it? Or is the feeling of success afterwards enough?"

Fellow writers, what do you think? Do you like the act of writing? Do you think it matters? Let me know in the comments!