EDITOR’S NOTE: Star Foster is what you might call a new-media writer. In addition to writing some pretty darn cool award-winning interactive fiction, she’s also a very prolific blogger, maintaining her personal weblog, Sarcasmo’s Corner, as well as writing for ShinyShiny and Phillyist. That’s right: She gets paid to blog. How cool is that? She’s also working on a super-secret computer game project, and if we’re lucky we’ll hear more on that anon.

The brutal task-masters of the Bitter Quill have requested of me a small missive on Why I Write. Better to ask me why I breathe or have hazel eyes or prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate. These things can be explained – not by me, of course, but by people with a much stronger grasp of biology and science1. But as to why I write… that is a more difficult question.

I have never not wanted to write, and since I’ve learned how to put ideas to paper, I have never not written. Look to the future autobiography I wrote in the 4th grade, and you’ll see that I had myself pegged as a Newberry Award winner by 30 (drat! Another deadline missed!) In high school I kept a journal whose covers were decorated in my tight, careless script by quotes that inspired me. I often prefer type over talk, and scribbling over superfluous speech.

Writing is hardwired into my make-up. It is how I think best, how I express myself most eloquently, and how I question and explore my world. It is the unwanted, emotionally abusive lover I will make every effort to deny (sometimes even stooping to housework as an avoidance technique when the muse calls) only to end up back in it’s deliciously sinister embrace; exhausted, exhilarated, and anxiously looking for “le seul mot juste” for a monkey on one’s back that is constantly disparaged and yet continually fed for fear it will leave. I write because I want to, because I have to, because I can’t stop myself from constantly wondering “what if,” then from trying to discover the answer. I Write. For me, the “why?” has never really been a consideration.

Now, will I publish? And more importantly, will my work be read? These are the universe’s Greater Mysteries; and ones hopefully The Bitter Quill will help me unravel. And, if not – hey, at least it’s a by-line.

A far more compelling question is, I think, why writers don’t write. Why do we hem and haw and stare at the blank page or blinking cursor and then find something, anything else to do with our time? I’m not talking about the dreaded ‘Writer’s Block’ either – I’m talking about having the ideas and the words at the ready, and yet falling in our duty to pour those out on to the page. We might claim family obligations, or the sudden need for social interaction or that the dishes need doing or the fact that the game is on. Is there any other passion in the world, any itch so easily scratched, any other burning desire so ardently avoided by the desirer? For me, it’s not in the wanting, but in the doing that lies the mystery of this vocation.

1 Well, except the chocolate bit. I can explain that: It just plain tastes better. You’ll notice “white chocolate” enters nowhere into that equation. That is because it is not chocolate at all, but rather a misnamed aberration. I realize that our language is a wonderful, fluid thing; but there are some words I am simply unwilling to budge on. Chocolate is one of them.