Why write?

I never set out to write for monetary reward. I decided to write simply because I’ve long had a passion for crime thrillers. This was doubtless influenced by my father having been a prominent detective in the town where I spent my childhood. My fascination intensified as I grew up and became interested in the ways in which crime and policing were reflected in the media.

Neither did I set out to write for personal recognition. On the contrary, I can count on the fingers of two hands the number of people who have read my work and who know the actual person behind the pen-name Ian Patrick. I’ve hosted two online Q&A sessions on the popular Facebook Forum “Books and Everything” and addressed a public audience in Oxford, and among those audiences, collectively, there was only one person who knows the person behind the pen-name (and I’m grateful to him for maintaining my pseudonymity). Who I am doesn’t matter to most readers. It’s the story and its characters they respond to, judging from reviews on Goodreads, Audible and Amazon.

So if it’s not for money or personal recognition, why do I write? Well, who knows, really? All I can say is that I’m gripped by a passion to write. I still get excited enough to get up in the middle of the night to write a scene: worried I’ll forget it when I surface in the morning. Characters loom large in my dreams. They intrude upon my plans for them. They tell me they do not want to behave in the way I had planned for them, and they nudge me down different paths, into different encounters, and into strange new experiences.

Perhaps the real reason for the compulsion to write is that authors simply want to escape the real world, however briefly, in order to create a world they can control. In a different context, I’ve quoted Tolkien on this issue. In the same vein, I listened to Lee Child talking to an audience recently. He expressed the view that in the real world criminals and corrupt individuals too often get away with their dastardly deeds, whereas in the world of fiction he could create a giant hero by the name of Jack Reacher who would restore the balance and deal with the bad guys in a way the real world so often fails to do.

I think I’m with Lee Child on that one. And if I were ever to decide to invade Normandy, I’d want Jack Reacher with me, for sure.