Why We Create

Today, I read Mike Singleton’s Our Addiction to Dystopia, Horror and Sadness. It got me thinking not just about why we read and view what we read and view but also about why we create what we create. What compels us to create what we create? Why do we want to write, draw, paint, sculpt, act, dance, etc., when there seems to be no productive reason behind it (which itself is debatable)?

Of course, we all have our personal reasons. I have written on the subject of why I personally write before, explaining that I use my writing to share my view of the world with others. I’m sure that if you ask a hundred artists—a hundred creators—why they create, then you will get a hundred different answers. However, at the root of these hundred different answers will be a common hidden factor: we are trying to make sense of the world we live in.

You might be thinking right now, “That’s not why I (write, draw, dance). I do it for fun!”

That’s probably true. We do find it fun to create. Creating is probably also our way of escaping the world in which we live. However, that does not mean that it isn’t also the way that we process our understanding of the world around us.

Let’s take the art of writing as an example. More specifically, let’s take a look at my writing. My writing ranges from fantasy and science fiction to contemporary fiction, from poetry and essays to shorty stories and story chapters. Despite this variety, my writing helps me to comprehend the world in which I live. Even writing this train of thought is helping me to understand how other people and I think and why, although I did not start out with that mission in mind.

Often, I do not purposefully use my writing to make sense of the world, but it happens anyway. My latest Top Story, Security, was written specifically for the Future Fragments Challenge. I did not set out to write something to help me process the world around me; my goal was to write a story that fulfilled the requirements of the Challenge. Nevertheless, on a subconscious level, coming up with the concept for the story helped me to process the outcome of the 2024 U.S. election and the effects that it could have on the world in the near future.

There are times, though, when I set out to write something that helps me to process something that has happened in my life or in the world at large. One example is my story Dates, Not Dating. This short story is based very loosely on events that happened during my college years. I wrote the story in the hopes that I could understand what had transpired emotionally between a guy that I had gone on a few dates with and me, while also trying to work out the frustration that people did not understand the difference between going on a few dates with someone and dating them.

Creating does a lot for our thought process. It forces us to organize and focus our thoughts, but it also allows our minds to drift and be carried away by the thoughts on which we are focused. As we keep our minds on these thoughts, everything that distracts us floats away, and we can finally process that which normally overwhelms us. We make them into characters, scenarios, shapes, colors, movements, whatever it is that makes the most sense to us, and we send them out into the world in a new and creative way.

We create to show the world what we think, but we also create just to think, period. Without creation, we would not have thought and understanding. And that would be a bleak world.