Why do I write?

...and being more elephant!

For reasons that will become clearer, I’ve been asking myself recently, why do I write? What’s the purpose of me opening my laptop most weeks, trying to connect and share my thoughts and experiences with anyone who might be out there in the Substack ether?

I hadn’t written anything since leaving school until we sold our house and almost all our possessions to have a narrow boat built to live on; because so many people we knew were interested in what had prompted such a dramatic life change, I started writing a blog on Facebook.

Part of the reason for such a big life change also happened because I’d completely burnt out/broken down, call it what you will, but the upshot was that I found myself not having any idea what was happening to me and I wanted to ‘sort myself out’.

Because I’d started to write about my personal journey (sorry to use the J word!), Facebook didn’t feel the right place to do so, so I created my Substack page ‘Saved by Grace’. The page is named after our boat ‘Grace’ and because I also needed to give myself grace in attempting to find out what was going on (with me) that caused me to fall apart so spectacularly.

I wanted to structure my writing as a parallel journey, writing about travelling along the canal system and what I was learning about myself, as we navigated the waterways.

If I had a niche at all, this was the closest I felt I could get to one!

Ultimately, I was writing for myself as a way of trying to understand my feelings, attempting to make sense of what had happened and finding ways to move forward; I guess my writing has always been a kind of personal journal, with the hope that my experiences might resonate with others and maybe help them too in some way.

I’ve written many newsletters as I’d originally intended, writing about the different canals, towns and villages we’ve visited and also about the process of learning more about myself.

My life has changed recently in several ways; firstly, the great summer we’ve had in the UK has caused water shortages on the canal network, with most canals closing and therefore being impassable to boats.

Also, we bought a motorhome in April as there were so many places NOT on the canal system that we wanted to visit and at 68 and 73, we thought we’d better crack on and get moving by van as well as by boat!

As a result of these changes, we’ve spent most of the summer travelling in the van and haven’t been out on the boat at all; this has been great for me, but has made it difficult to maintain a focus for my writing as I’d originally intended.

I must be honest and say I sometimes feel disappointed that I lose subscribers most weeks, although like most of us, I spend more time focusing on losing subscribers than on the fact I do get a regular rate of new subscribers too.

I’ve spent time wondering if I should find a new perspective to write from; how can I attract readers when I’m writing about what I want to write about, rather than catering to an audience?

I’ve written before about my ‘old’ people pleasing behaviours and it had occurred to me that losing subscribers and attracting fewer comments was causing feelings of rejection and feelings of not being ‘good enough’, but today, I’ve realised that isn’t the case at all.

For me, writing has always been about connection; what usually happens is this….maybe I’ve read something in a book or in another Substack newsletter and it’s initiated a train of thought in me.

That train of thought (and feelings) ignites a feeling of enthusiasm that I want to share with others, not because I want or need validation, but because that feeling when someone says ‘yes, I feel/think that too, isn’t it interesting?’ is the greatest feeling ever!

My motivation for writing is to connect with others, to share and to experience feeling seen, heard and understood in that connection; in other words, to experience what it is to be human.

Steve Biddulph writes about elephants and their behaviours in his beautiful book Wild Creature Mind; in a chapter titled ‘Why We Need Each Other To Be Free’ he compares their behaviour to human behaviour, in that they are sociable, caring and like humans, they thrive from being part of a group. They do life as a team, not in isolation.

He also writes that when researching into causes of everything from heart disease to depression (in humans), the biggest risk factors of all are related to lack of social support and connection. So much of our lives are lived separately from each other and we’ve lost the clan/tribe/herd societies that ensured we thrived as a species for hundreds of thousands of years.

Elephants still operate as a herd, with millions of years of ‘rules and regulations’ that ensure their survival; they have a culture of how things are done which is passed on through each generation. As a species, they are socially aware, always in touch with and helping each other.

I feel at a bit of a loss as to what to write about going forward; do I continue to write as a way of making sense of myself and my own life or do I continue to try to connect with others through my writing in a way that is less self focused? Do I need a new niche and who am I writing for anyway? Do I write about my thoughts and feeling in my journal and not on Substack?

These are all questions I’ve asked myself recently, but I can’t override that human need to connect, to share, to be curious, to enthuse, to have even one person say ‘yes, that’s my experience too, isn’t that interesting’.

I can’t, nor would I want to dampen down my curiosity and enthusiasm in any aspect of my life; without those feelings, I wouldn’t be truly myself.

Ultimately, if I don’t have a niche, if I feel that I’m often writing into a vacuum and I lose most of my subscribers, I’ll never stop writing, because I’ll always be curious, I’ll always feel enthusiastic about connecting through writing and I’ll always want to be more elephant :-)

Karen x