Lutz Brinkmann, writing samples
Let me say in just a few sentences why a writer writes. Three reasons come to mind. One is positive feedback one gets early in life. This tends to happen to bookish children, usually the sissies of the playground, who are driven by some accident of chance or fate to retreat into a book or comic magazine world, there practising key skills, namely the handling of text through sheer repetition, thereby getting teachers and relatives to nod approvingly and then repeat their approval. The bird, figuratively speaking, quickly senses which part of the cage to go to in order to get food. The second reason is growing up in a culture that attaches prestige to the written word. You learn that you can show off if there is a book with your name as the author written on its cover for all to see. Reason number three: life ends at some stage, and often enough your intellect, as a capable tool for producing much, ends long before that. It provides some solace for those who yet remain among the living to know that the output of their minds might be around post mortem, even if just for a little while longer. A soldier in classical antiquity wants to be remembered for brave deeds that become tales told by posterity; in the modern era a book serves its author in a similar way. I said there are three reasons, and yet, here’s a fourth: It may be that you, as a writer, have something you want to freely give to someone in particular or to many, emphasis on the giving; and maybe (maybe) what makes you want to do that is wholly altruistic, like Aristotle writing his Ethics for his son, Nicomachus.