Jay Chesters: Why I Write (When I Could Always Take up Competitive Chess)

The idea is the key that unlocks the story. Once you have the key, it's your job to tell that story in the best way you know how

Picture: 2H Media/Unsplash

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If I were a spiritual man, I'd say writing was divine. After all, we're told in the beginning was the word. Emphasis and interpretation both mine.

It goes like this. I write because I can't not write. I write like I'm driven by some unknown force.

If you're a writer, you've probably been asked where you get your ideas. Most writers I know don't often spend time thinking up new ideas for stories. Some ideas are inspired by an idle conversation late at night or sprout like a beanstalk from a trivial discovery in a century-old newspaper archive. Others might be driven by a random writing prompt.

I believe the stories were already there, in some form, waiting in the ether. The idea is the key that unlocks the story. Once you have the key, it's your job to tell that story in the best way you know how.

Perhaps this all makes it sound like I somehow think writing is easy. Maybe I'm not clearly expressing how writing sometimes feels like I’m trying to squeeze all the world's oceans out of a narrow bathroom tap.

If I could choose a compulsion, there are undoubtedly better things out there I’d pick. I would prefer to be compelled to tirelessly research a cure for deadly diseases or even to eat healthily, get enough sleep, and take plenty of exercise. But a choice is not a compulsion, just as writing is not and has never been a choice.

For as long as I have been clumsily holding a pencil, I have been writing stories, regardless of whether anyone read them. Then, personal computers came along and made it easier to write faster and for longer. At least, right up until I write something that I want to fact-check, and it's then I realise that three hours have gone by and I'm still researching the history of hat-making.

[as an aside, I once tried writing stories using an old typewriter in a misguided attempt to avoid this distraction peril. Fashioning a quill from a raven's elegant feather and writing using that would have been faster than the typewriter.]

But the question remains: why do I listen to these mysterious forces that demand I write? After all, I could ignore them, like I frequently ignore that inner voice that tells me to drink more water.

'Why do I do this?' I ask myself this more often than I care to admit, as my writer friends will attest to. I ask myself why I write whenever I get a negative review or a rejection for a story I put my entire soul into, or when a competition entry falls flatter than an out-of-tune banjo that's been squashed by a particularly burly elephant.

I could save myself a lot of heartache and soul-searching if I did something other than writing.

Or, if I enjoy feeling like I'm not good enough, I could always take up competitive chess. I have never quite got the hang of the game and its inscrutable intricacies, like how the horsey moves. My restless thoughts wander too much when I should be ruthlessly plotting five moves ahead. Chess would be an unbeatable way of feeling beaten down.

Then I remind myself that I write because if I had no other way, I'd be crushing up vivid green berries and using a nicely pointed stick to write stories on strips of papery bark. I remind myself that I'm still that child who wrote stories without caring if anyone read them.

I write because the stories demand to be written, and I have been tasked to do it. And because with all my stories, I'm as invested as everyone else in wanting to know what happens next.

My writing getting read is something else entirely, and I'm endlessly grateful to everyone who picks up what I'm putting down.

Jay Chesters is an internationally published West Australian wordsmith with a penchant for the peculiar.

Weaving tales that blend the familiar with the uncanny, folklore with sci-fi and social commentary, Jay’s quirky contemporary fiction is thought-provoking and often drily humorous. The stories explore themes of identity, connection, and the surprising beauty of the human experience.

When he’s not working, Jay is usually found in the wild in Perth’s bookshops or in various cafes and coffee shops, writing and making the place look untidy. When he’s not writing, Jay spends his time fretting about how he really should be writing.