Maybe It's Just in My DNA

I have observed before that the need to write is a strange compulsion, one that is almost impossible to explain to anyone who doesn't suffer from the same affliction. Despite the 80% or so of Americans who seem to think they could write a book, few seem to want to do so badly enough to bother. Those of us who do bother are...well...not normal.

Even if you aren't like me and don't feel compelled to do it, even if you don't turn into a complete monster bitch if you can't find the time for it, if you are actually writing a book, you are different from most of the people you know in your real life.

But while I was growing up, I didn't feel particularly different because I wanted to write the stories that careened like drunken butterflies in my head. Because, you see, I think my need to write might just be genetic.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned on the blog that my father, who passed away in the summer of 1998, was a writer. Primarily, he wrote articles for many auto racing magazines. He often joked he was a freelance writer with the emphasis on "free." But after he retired from the Border Patrol, where he was an anti-smuggling agent, he sat down and wrote two novels based on his experiences. Two wonderful novels which, as yet, remain unpublished. One of these days, I hope to get them out in the world. And he always said that he didn't write because he wanted to, but because he HAD to.

Like me, my younger sister wrote stories (in her case, mostly fantasy/science fiction stuff) from about the moment she could construct a sentence on paper. In my immediate family, the only person who didn't display this trait was my mother, but although she didn't write fiction, she read it voraciously (and still does!).

So, growing up in a household where 3/4s of the members suffered from the same "disease," I never felt particularly odd. I sort of assumed everyone told themselves stories in bed at night to put themselves to sleep and often found themselves preoccupied by snippets of dialogue between the imaginary people who lived in their heads. I probably didn't grasp the "unusualness" of my condition until I was in high school.

It wasn't until I was in high school or college that I learned the writing compulsion goes back a good deal farther in my family than I'd previously thought, and that I had it coming to me from both sides.

Turns out that my mother's father, a minister turned Psychology professor who died in 1958, years before my birth, also wrote a novel. (Among other things, I found the announcement of his marriage to my grandmother when I googled his name. It's here.) His novel was a mystery. And he didn't quite get to the end of it. I read the manuscript when I was in my late teens, I think, and I thought I figured out how the detective had determined "whodunit" and could've written the ending, but I don't think I'd ever have mastered his voice, so I didn't try.

And my father's grandfather was also a writer, though of non-fiction. He wrote non-fiction articles for Field and Stream magazine back in the early part of the 20th century, many of which were illustrated by my famous artist great uncle, Francis Lee Jaques. (I didn't get the artist gene apparently, drat it all. When my first son was born, I dreaded the first time he asked me to draw something for him. I was right to worry!)

Now, I'm sure most writers don't have ancestors who were writers. I just find it fascinating that there's such a strong thread of writing in my family. Arguably, I write because I patterned it from my father (except that I wrote fiction long before he ever did), but I doubt he patterned it from his grandfather (his father and grandfather were somewhat estranged) and I couldn't have patterned anything from my maternal grandfather, either, since he died before I was born.

So, maybe there is something in the genes.

What about you? Why do you think you write? Do you have any writers in your family tree? And do you think your desire/need to write was learned or is innate?