What Is Your Why?
How Our Stories And Purpose Intersect
Why do we write the stories we write? That might seem like a strange question to ask oneself, but I feel the act of being driven to compose an entire story out of thin air with fleshed-out characters absolutely begs us to reflect on our Why.
Why?
Well, if we know why we are writing the stories we write, with the characters we choose, we will understand why those stories keep coming to us in different shapes and will be able to write them at a deeper level of awareness.
In essence I feel all writers (no matter the genre they’re writing) are circling a fundamental question within them. Most likely one that is subsconscious and rooted in their childhood years.
Ask yourself: Why do I write the stories I write? Not why do I write, there’s a big difference.
Do you natively know the answer? If you do, kudos to you. Most do not. We just write. We fall into the flow and watch the words come out from somewhere beyond us, the ‘out there’. I am beginning to think our words are not coming from ‘out there’ but ‘in here’.
Swami Vivekananda, the 19th century Hindu monk and philosopher once stated: “No knowledge comes from outside; it is all inside. What we say a man ‘knows’, should, in strict psychological language, be what he ‘discovers’ or ‘unveils’; what a man ‘learns’ is really what he ‘discovers’, by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge”.
In other words:
All knowledge is within you.
And it is. I sense our imagination is like a kind of satellite dish we have to access to the unbounded world of possibility within us, and depending on how well aligned the dish is, the better the reception. I’ve since become driven to find a creative, compelling way that can be adapted to anyone’s style of thinking to unlock the coordinates of one’s inner satellite dish to their most abundant personal creative frequency.
And to do that, we need, no, we must understand our Why.
Originally, the Why project has come about from my own writing needs. I’m working through writing a literary fiction that is challenging me to the limit of my abilities and talents (although I am determined to have it complete by the end of 2026 - feel free to ask me how I’m getting on, the accountability will help keep me from falling behind).
First, the synopsis:
In this unique origin story of the myth of Hades and Persephone, we begin in a world beyond our own where ‘Hades’ and ‘Persephone’ are powerful leaders of an uprising against a brutal tyrant.
When ‘Hades’ is executed, ‘Persephone’, the daughter of the tyrant, is not. Before he is killed, he vows to find her again.
To this day she still exists, locked in a hyper-advanced level of stasis, one of the most feared punishments of her race.
Though her body is held in silence, her consciousness is not.
She is aware, and although she has no autonomy, she experiences life through the eyes of various humans on Earth. She lives and dies through them, only to begin again in another life centuries apart. Through these lives, she is driven by one imperative:
To find the shade of Hades and feel his love again, in our world.
This is their story.
Don’t ask my why I am driven to write this book, because honestly it scares the crap out of me. Also, it’s mega-ambitious and my imposter syndrome is telling me 24/7 I’m not good enough to write it.
For the longest time, I have had no idea why such a layered story has chosen me to write it. But it’s there all the time, in my dreams, in powerful emotions, and in glimpsed memories that cannot possibly be mine. I’ve written about thirty thousand words, and when I read them I feel disassociation, as though I couldn’t have possibly written them. This also scares me.
Like any good writer worth their salt when faced with a daunting project, I have been dodging and avoiding it, making excuses, and mitigating genuine terror each time I opened the manuscript. It just feels too big, but it also feels . . . weirdly personal, like I will reveal something about myself in this story to myself, if that makes sense. Something I’m not sure I’m ready to discover.
Since this story (even after four years of determined avoidance) wouldn’t go away on its own, I realized this year I had to put on my big girl pants and face facts. I decided to take a leaf out of Joan Didion’s approach to things she didn’t (yet) know how to handle: Learn about them.
This led to me asking myself two Why questions.
First: Why am I being pushed to write this story?
And second: Why this story?
As I leaned into that, I began to notice the themes in this book share a striking resonance with the deepest themes of my other books.
Interesting.
I began to mark out the similarities: Scope of time is vast; explores the origin of mythological gods; threads the loss of love and determination to restore that love beyond the barrier of death; explores themes of sacrifice, meaning, and purpose, even when those lives are faced with total loss and failure; reveals a throughline where the truest love cannot die; posits the possibility of immortality.
A pattern began to emerge. I hadn’t noticed it when writing my other six books, I just thought I was writing stories I liked. But this book, the one that I have been resisting, forced me to start asking questions so I could write it without falling apart.
And this led me to realize we aren’t just writing stories. We are navigating our deepest Why question through our stories. We just don’t know that’s what we’re doing.
Without even being aware, I had practiced exploring my Why in my other books, but this is the book. This is the one where I go face-to-face with my ultimate Why and try to answer it through fiction.
What I don’t know is what the answer will be. What I do know is that this experience has led me to deep introspection, and helped generate the foundation for a tool that I can share with my clients to help them discover their Why.
And if that’s not art, I don’t know what is.
Here’s a few questions I use with my clients to get them thinking about their Why:
What concepts or ideas (even if considered unreal in this world) do you think could be true? This can be anything, there are no limits.
Imagine a genie telling you that you can have anything you wish for but you have to relinquish forever the one emotion you value the most. Would you give up the emotion? Why or why not?
What do you feel is the most unjust behavior/practice of humans that if you could, you could end permanently?
You discover you are a character in a book. Imagine yourself locked in a space with your character-self. Ask your character what it wants to experience in their as-yet unwritten book.
Exploring these questions will help you to get closer to the things that drive you creatively, these answers will highlight what truly matters to you in your deepest most secret part of you. Some may have their roots in your childhood.
Learn more about discovering your why with me here.
