Why Write?

If you want to write well then you have to write for the love of it, and not for anything that you hope it might bring you. Because it’s love of the craft that’s going to keep you going for all the long years that it can take to become a halfway-decent writer.

Teresa M Amabile is currently the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. In 1985 she studied how writers are motivated* and concluded that while intrinsic motivation (writing for enjoyment) increased the quality of work produced, extrinsic motivation (hoping for financial success or fame) led to decreased quality. Which is just as well, when you consider that less than 5% of writers make a living at the job, while even fewer ever achieve any sort of glory, fame or notoriety from the work.

*Amabile, T. M. “Motivation and Creativity: Effects of Motivational Orientation on Creative Writers.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48, no. 2 (February 1985): 393-399.