What drives people to write in any year, any century, any time? In the U.S, 2017 was a landmark year of sorts and many writers and intellectuals were torn between their roles as citizens and their lives as artists. With the omnipotence of Wi-Fi, writing is becoming a kind of meditation, a relinquishing of the world where the only verb that matters is ‘want’. You write to sort out the thoughts in your head, to understand the world and keep writing to satisfy the ‘primal hunger’. This is not easy when living today means distractions and continuous response to stimuli. Joe Fassler examines the need that drives a writer to strike a pose that requires complete isolation and detachment from the world.
Read Why Write Fiction in 2017? by Joe Fassler. His essay makes sense in 2018 and any other year for that matter.
