Why Do All Men Want To Write Novels?

He looked out of the window, out of his apartment, and into the dark of the winter night outside. It was raining, faint but determined. Across the park, the grass melted away from the sodium glow of the street, into the black void under the trees. It was 3 am and not even a crepuscular fox was still awake.

He looked down at his hand, resting on the sill. It held a tooth mug, half full of warm whisky. He frowned, momentarily confused. Was it his second or third? Did it matter? Did anything matter? After all, she was gone now. Her taxi had come early, announced its presence with impatience, and she’d skipped down the stairs without looking back. That had been hours ago now, the evening had come and gone, and he hadn’t moved from the window. Once again, he asked himself the question that had circled him, mercilessly harrowing, since she’d slammed the door and run across the road with her coat over her head against the drizzle.

“Why do men all want to write novels?”

Was it the idea of leaving something permanent behind, something that would live on – even only on a dusty shelf – after they had left the world? Well, maybe. Maybe it was part of the urge to father something, to reproduce, to leave one’s mark. But it was more than that.

Was it, then, the need to create, to make some sense of this world, to comb and weave its tangled threads into something true and meaningful, and to tell that truth back to the world? Possibly. Yes, possibly.

He took a swig. The drink hit his stomach and the heat spread through his chest. He smiled, a wry and rueful grimace. Yes, possibly they wanted to make some sort of statement about life, some naked and uncompromising telling of reality – but there was something else, something more fundamental, more elemental. And he knew what it was.

He turned away from the window, leant over the desk, and opened his laptop. The screen glowed and the cursor blinked at the top of a new document as he sat down. He wrote six words, got up and went to the kitchen. He tipped the rest of his whisky into the sink, set the glass beside it, turned off the light and disappeared down the hall to his bedroom.

In the half-dark, the laptop screen shone out blindly. His words stood alone at the top of the page:

They do it to be loved.

He had known it as soon as he saw her pick up her bag to go. He had known that he would let her go, let anyone and anything go, just to be able to write, to write the truth, a fundamental and undeniable truth, yes, and a truth that would stay in the world and tell of his having lived. But more than anything else, he wanted to be adored for it. He wanted to agonize for eternity, over screeds and sheaves of pretentious drivel, just like this, and to be loved for it. To be loved.

Contact the author here: thewhy@morningquickie.com